Plants and Eco-Friendly Products

PLANTS AND ECO-FRIENDLY PRODUCTS

Read the following text at home. Be sure you understand the
COMPLETE TEXT; if not, ask questions to the teacher.
Then, underline or highlight the FIVE main ideas in the text (BE
SURE YOU INCLUDE THE IDEAS IN BOLD LETTERS).
INTRODUCTION
In 2013, every Spanish citizen produced around 450 kilos of rubbish. From
the total quantity of rubbish produced, 60% of it ended up in landfills.
Rubbish in landfills pollutes the environment and damages the
ecosystems. As a consequence, other strategies to treat the garbage
are established, such as: recycling, producing compost or incinerating.
However, another emerging strategy is the production of eco-friendly
products that do not damage the environment.
Eco-friendly

products

have

the

characteristic

of

very

quick

degradation (around six months) and no pollution. Degradation is a

process in which a material is broken into smaller molecules usually by
microorganisms in the soil (bacteria and fungi). However, degradation
can be initiated artificially in some cases by exposure to heat.
In addition, one of the most common materials nowadays is plastic. The
problem with plastic is that it takes more than 100 years to degrade it
and so it damages a lot the environment. Therefore, biodegradable
plastics have been designed using plants such as biobags or biofilm.
Furthermore, ecological clothes have been created too. It is the case of
clothes created with pineapple or bamboo fibers.
To conclude, plants can produce eco-friendly
materials of daily-use

Plants and Eco-Friendly Products

PLANTS AND ECO-FRIENDLY PRODUCTS

Read the following text at home. Be sure you understand the
COMPLETE TEXT; if not, ask questions to the teacher.
Then, underline or highlight the FIVE main ideas in the text (BE
SURE YOU INCLUDE THE IDEAS IN BOLD LETTERS).
PLANTS TO PRODUCE PACKING MATERIALS - Lecture 1.
Millions of plastic bags are used every day around the world. Due to their
low weight, many of them usually end up contaminating the natural
environment: plastic bags caught in tree branches or bushes. As a
consequence, plastic bags show one of the main problems of pollution.
Plastic is used as a packing material. However, it shows problems to
recycle it as a lot of energy is needed. The main method used in Europe
to recycle is using landfills, but this pollutes the land and water sources.
For this reason, degradable bags are slowly starting to replace classic
plastic bags. They are called biodegradable bags or biobags, which try
to make the reduction of waste easier and safer for the environment. The
degradable plastic bags are usually made from plant material like cornstarch, resins or vegetable oils. Recently, biobags made from potato
peels can be bought in some supermarkets
(Carrefour). In order to fulfil the requirements,
biobags must be decomposed by bacteria in 6
months: after this time, there should be not
remains of the degradable bags left.

Plants and Eco-Friendly Products

PLANTS AND ECO-FRIENDLY PRODUCTS

Read the following text at home. Be sure you understand the
COMPLETE TEXT; if not, ask questions to the teacher.
Then, underline or highlight the FIVE main ideas in the text (BE
SURE YOU INCLUDE THE IDEAS IN BOLD LETTERS).
PLANTS TO PRODUCE PACKING MATERIALS - Lecture 2
Nowadays there is a big problem with trying to recycle rubbish and
avoiding contamination. A big part of this rubbish is related to the
packing materials that is used more and more every year. Packing
materials are used to protect the food we eat, the packs or letters we
send An example of these materials is the plastic film that usually
protects food at home or in the supermarket.
One of the main problems of the plastic film is that it pollutes the
environment and it is difficult to recycle.
For that reason, Spanish scientists have investigated and discovered that
materials from plants can be used to produce a plastic film. This plastic
film is called biofilm and it is produced using corn, wheat or potatoes.
One of the main advantages this biofilm has is that it can be easily
degraded by the microorganisms (bacteria, fungi or algae) in the soil; it
is 100% degraded whereas the normal plastic film is not. Therefore it
reduces the pollution in the environment. In addition, one of the uses of
this biofilm is packing food.
Biofilm is another case of a daily-used material which can be produced
by plants, reducing the pollution in the environment. Plants also can
produce eco-friendly materials
to use every day.

Plants and Eco-Friendly Products

PLANTS AND ECO-FRIENDLY PRODUCTS

Read the following text at home. Be sure you understand the
COMPLETE TEXT; if not, ask questions to the teacher.
Then, underline or highlight the FIVE main ideas in the text (BE
SURE YOU INCLUDE THE IDEAS IN BOLD LETTERS).
PLANTS TO PRODUCE ECO-CLOTHES - Lecture 1
Society is starting to be more and more concerned about the problem
of pollution and the way humans modify nature. As a consequence, the
words organic or eco-friendly are very common as people try to
damage less the environment. This objective has arrived to the fashion
world and the way clothes are produced.
The main materials that clothes are made of at present times are cotton
and linen. However, some plants are starting to be used as a sustainable
alternative to these main producers of clothes. This is the case of the
pineapple plant, which can be used to create eco-friendly clothes. The
pineapple fibers from the leaves are what is used to give clothes. The
extraction of these fibers is hand-made because they break very easily.
It has to be mentioned that pineapple fabric was very popular in the XIX
century. However, the production of pineapple stopped when the
cotton production was discovered to be cheaper. For that reason,
pineapple production of clothes was difficult to re-establish. It began
with the production of very expensive clothes; as a consequence, it was
a sign of rich people. Nowadays, pineapple fibers are starting to emerge
as a sustainable alternative to create clothes. Two
years ago, a Spanish cloth designer created an
enterprise called Piatex, in which pineapple fibers
are used to create clothes.

Plants and Eco-Friendly Products

PLANTS AND ECO-FRIENDLY PRODUCTS

Read the following text at home. Be sure you understand the
COMPLETE TEXT; if not, ask questions to the teacher.
Then, underline or highlight the FIVE main ideas in the text (BE
SURE YOU INCLUDE THE IDEAS IN BOLD LETTERS).
PLANTS TO PRODUCE ECO-CLOTHES - Lecture 2
Textile industries nowadays make their clothes with plants like cotton or
linen. The problem is that in order to continue producing clothes, these
plants must grow very quickly. But in nature this does not happen so fast
and ecosystems suffer a lot. For that reason, ecological clothes are
starting to appear. It is the case of bamboo, a plant which is
environmentally friendly.
Moso bamboo in the specific plant which is used to produce clothes.
From the bamboo plant, the fibers are extracted in factories; the fibers
are the part of the plant used to make clothes. One of the advantages is
that it does not damage the environment as much as other plants. In
addition, bamboo is very easy to grow as it does not require a lot of
water.
In order to understand better the advantages of bamboo plants for the
textile industry, it can be compared with cotton. Bamboo plants do not
need pesticides to grow whereas cotton requires a big quantity of them.
Furthermore, bamboo fibers are longer than cotton so less bamboo
plants are needed to produce a piece of cloth. Bamboo also has a
unique quality, which is antibacterial. Finally, bamboo clothes show a
much vivid colour than cotton clothes.