Reading Skills

READING A POPULAR SCIENCE ARTICLE

TEXT I PRE-READING DISCUSSION What are the objectives of Recycling? What do people usually recycle? Why? Mention ways/methods of recycling that you know and discuss those with your friend. 1 By 2000, half the recoverable material in Britain's dustbin will be recycled that, at least, was the target set last November by Chris Patten, Secretary of State for the Environment. But he gave no clues as to how we should go about achieving it. While recycling enthusiasts debate the relative merits of different collection system, it will largely be new technology, and the opening up of new markets, that makes Patten's target attainable: a recycling scheme is successful only if manufacturers use the recovered materials in new products that people want to buy.

2 About half, by weight, of the contents of the typical British dustbin is made up of combustible materials. These materials comprise 33 per cent paper, 7 per cent plastics (a growing proportion), 4 per cent textiles and 8 per cent miscellaneous combustibles. 3 Of the rest, hard non-combustibles (metals and glass) each make up another 10 per cent, and 'putrescibles', such as potato peelings and cabbage stalks, account for 20 per cent, although this proportion is decreasing as people eat more pre-prepared foods. The final fraction is 'fines' nameless dust. This mixture is useless to industry, and in Britain most of it is disposed of in landfill sites-suitable holes, such as worked-out quarries, in which the waste is buried under layers of soil and clay. That still leaves about 40 per cent of the mixtureglass containers, plastics, and some paper and metal containersas relatively clean when discarded. This clean element is the main target for Britain's recyclers. The first question, then, is how best to separate the clean element from the rest. The method of collection is important because manufacturers will not reuse collected material unless it is clean and available in sufficient quantities. A bewildering assortment of different collection schemes operates in the rest of Europe, and pilot schemes are now under way in many British cities including Leeds, Milton Keynes, Sheffield and Cardiff. Sheffield, Cardiff and Dundee are testing out alternatives as part of a government-monitored recycling project initiated last year by Friends of the Earth. A realistic target for recycling mixed refuse is somewhere between 15 and 25 per cent by weight, according to researchers at the Department of Trade and Industry's Warren Spring laboratory. This proportion would include metals and perhaps some glass. Statistics compiled by researchers at the University of East Anglia show that we could almost halve the total weight of domestic waste going to landfill by a combination of 'collect' schemes (such as doorstep collections for newspapers), 'bring' schemes (such as bottle banks) and plants for extracting metals. This estimate makes two important assumptions. One is that the government will bring in legislation to encourage the creation of markets for products made from recycled materials, especially glass, paper and plastics. The other is that industry will continue to introduce new technology that will improve both the products and the techniques used to separate recoverable materials from mixed refuse.

ENGLISH FOR ACADEMIC PURPOSES

51