学进去

Garbage or trash is a major kind of environmental pollution. Each person produces about 2kg of trash a day. We are making waste products faster than nature can break them down. And we are using up resources faster than they can be replaced.

This adds up to trouble for the environment. Where does all that garbage go? What can be done to help dispose of(处理) garbage? How can we make less garbage?

Garbage isn’t just the smelly rotting fruits, vegetables or meat that we throw away in our homes. Those are only a small part of all the stuff we throw away. We create other kinds of waste in construction, mining and in our factories.

Did you ever wonder what happens to your garbage? Most is burned or buried in landfills(垃圾填埋场). Less than a quarter of our waste is recycled.

With a population of 1.3 billion, garbage is a big problem for China. Chinese cities create around 148 million tons of garbage every year. The amount is growing at around 10 percent each year.

Once we used about 3 billion plastic shopping bags every day in China. The result was a great waste of resources and serious pollution. So we did something about that. Now we use more cloth bags and shopping baskets when we shop.

In the coming years China will build waste-to-energy plants in cities to clean up the garbage. But there’s a lot more that needs to be done. And you can play a part.