美国国家公共电台 NPR Plastic Is Everywhere And Recycling Isn't The End Of It

 

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

Few inventions in modern history have been as successful as plastic. It's in vehicles, building materials, most of our electronic devices. We wrap stuff in it. Maybe we even wear it. Now a research team has tallied¹ up how much plastic has been produced and where much of it has gone. NPR's Christopher Joyce reports that plastic is almost everywhere.

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CHRISTOPHER JOYCE, BYLINE²: It seems no one, up till now, has actually tallied how much plastic people have manufactured since its invention. Roland Geyer, an industrial ecologist, decided³ to do that. He was shocked.

ROLAND GEYER: 8.3 billion metric tons of plastics produced so far - that's just really an staggering amount.

JOYCE: Geyer, at the University of California, Santa Barbara, did some calculations.

GEYER: And it turned out it can cover an area the size of Argentina, which is the eighth-largest country in the world.

JOYCE: Ankle-deep. So is that a problem? Well, almost all plastics don't degrade.

GEYER: They will be with us for hundreds of years.

JOYCE: Much of it in the soil or in the ocean or our water. Plastic is, of course, very useful. Geyer and his colleagues found that 42 percent of plastic goes for packaging. The second-largest use is for construction, at about 20 percent. Plastic fibers⁴, like polyester, is one of the fastest-growing uses.

But eventually, most of it gets thrown away. In the U.S., three quarters of discarded plastic ends up in landfills or is just lost. The rest is incinerated or recycled. Geyer says recycling helps but usually just delays its inevitable⁵ disposal.

Writing in the journal Science Advances, Geyer notes that plastic production has grown 8 percent a year for decades. He says that outpaces any other manufactured material and shows no sign of slowing down because it's so useful.

GEYER: It is a fantastic material.

JOYCE: But one that we seem to be using to wrap the entire world.

GEYER: I sort of think of it as a giant experiment that we are conducting here on the planet. And no one really knows the outcome.

JOYCE: Christopher Joyce, NPR News.

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1 tallied   

v.计算，清点( tally的过去式和过去分词 )；加标签（或标记）于；（使）符合；（使）吻合

参考例句：

• The girl tallied them with her eyes for a moment. 新娘用目光把这些化妆品清点了一下。 来自教父部分
• His account of the accident tallied with hers. 他对事故的陈述和她的相吻合。 来自辞典例句

2 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

3 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。

4 fibers   

光纤( fiber的名词复数 )； （织物的）质地； 纤维，纤维物质

参考例句：

• Thesolution of collagen-PVA was wet spined with the sodium sulfate as coagulant and collagen-PVA composite fibers were prepared. 在此基础上，以硫酸钠为凝固剂，对胶原-PVA共混溶液进行湿法纺丝，制备了胶原-PVA复合纤维。
• Sympathetic fibers are distributed to all regions of the heart. 交感神经纤维分布于心脏的所有部分。

5 inevitable   

adj.不可避免的，必然发生的

参考例句：

• Mary was wearing her inevitable large hat.玛丽戴着她总是戴的那顶大帽子。
• The defeat had inevitable consequences for British policy.战败对英国政策不可避免地产生了影响。