SECTION 4

STUDENT: Well, my group has been doing a project on how household waste is recycled in Britain.

学生：好的，我的团队最近做了一个关于家庭垃圾如何在英国回收的项目。

We were quite shocked to discover that only 9% of people here in the UK make an effort to recycle their household waste.

我们很吃惊的发现在英国只有9%的人在努力回收家庭的垃圾。

This is a lower figure than in most other European countries, and needs to increase dramatically in the next few years if the government is going to meet its recycling targets.

这比其他大多数欧洲国家的数据要低，如果政府想达到它的回收目标，需要在未来几年努力提升。

The agreed targets for the UK mean that by 2008 we must reduce our carbon dioxide emissions by 12.5%, compared with 1990.

英国约定的目标是截止到2008年，我们必须比1990年减少12.5%二氧化碳的排放。

And recycling can help to achieve that goal, in two main ways: the production of recycled glass and paper uses much less energy than producing them from virgin materials, and also recycling reduces greenhouse gas emissions from landfill sites and incineration plants.

回收可以从两方面帮助达到这个目标：用回收的的玻璃和纸张生产使用的能量比从原材料生产少得多，而且回收可以从垃圾填埋和焚烧厂减少温室气体排放。

As part of our project, we carried out a survey of people in the street, and the thing that came up over and over again is that people don't think it's easy enough to recycle their waste.

作为我们项目的一部分，我们在街头开展了调查，人们一遍遍重复的事情是他们认为回收垃圾不够容易。

One problem is that there aren't enough 'drop-off' sites, that is, the places where the public are supposed to take their waste.

一个问题是他们认为没有足够的丢弃点，也就是公众应该把垃圾带到的地方。

We also discovered that waste that's collected from householders is taken to places called 'bring banks', for sorting and baling into loads.

我们还发现，从家里收集来的垃圾经常被运到叫做“收集银行”的地方，在这里被分类和整理装载。

One problem here is taking out everything that shouldn't have been placed in the recycling containers: people put all sorts of things into bottle banks, like plastic bags and even broken umbrellas.

这里的一个问题是要回收容器里不属于这类的东西拣出去。人们什么都往瓶子银行里放，比如塑料袋，甚至破雨伞。

All this has to be removed by hand.

所有这些都要手动移除。

Another difficulty is that toughened glass used for cooking doesn't fully melt at the temperature required for other glass, and so that also has to be picked out by hand.

另一个困难是用于烹饪的强化玻璃在其他玻璃熔化的温度不会彻底融化，所以这也要被手动拣出。

Glass is easy to recycle because it can be reused over and over again without becoming weaker.

玻璃容易回收因为它可以被一遍遍使用，而不会变弱。

Two million tons of glass is thrown away each year, that is, seven billion bottles and jars; but only 500,000 tons of that is collected and recycled.

每年要扔掉2,000,000吨玻璃，也就是7,000,000,000各瓶子和罐子，但其中只有500,000吨被收集和回收。

Oddly enough, half the glass that's collected is green, and a lot of that is imported, so more green glass is recycled than the UK needs.

奇怪的是，回收的玻璃一半是绿色的，其中很多是进口的，所以回收的绿玻璃比英国需要的要多。

As a result, new uses are being developed for recycled glass, particularly green glass, for example in fibreglass manufacture and water filtration.

最后，开发了使用回收玻璃的新用途，特别是绿玻璃，比如，在玻璃纤维制造和水体过滤方面。

A company called CLF Aggregates makes a product for roads, and 30% of the material is crushed glass.

一个叫做CLF混凝土的公司制作了一款用于道路的产品，其中30%的材料是碎玻璃。

For recycling paper, Britain comes second in Europe with 40%, behind Germany's amazing 70%.

关于纸品回收，英国回收率40%，位列欧洲第二，位于令人吃惊的70%的德国后面。

When recycling started, there were quality problems, so it was difficult to use recycled paper in office printers.

在回收刚开始的时候，有些质量问题，所以很难把它用在办公室打印机上。

But these problems have now been solved, and Martin's, based in South London, produces a range of office stationery which is 100% recycled, costs the same as normal paper and is of equally high quality.

但是这个问题现在已经被解决了，南伦敦的马丁，生产了各种利用100%回收材料制成的办公文具，和普通纸张的成本相同，也一样高品质。

But this high quality comes at a cost in terms of the waste produced during the process.

但是这个高质量在生产过程中的废物产出方面造成了一些成本。

Over a third of the waste paper that comes in can't be used in the recycled paper, leaving the question of what to do with it.

回收的纸张里面有超过1/3不能再被制作成回收纸张，留下了能拿它干什么的问题。

One firm, Papersave, currently sells this to farmers as a soil conditioner, though this practice will soon be banned because of transport costs and the smell, and the company is looking into the possibility of alternative uses.

一个叫做“省纸”的公司，目前把它卖给农民，作为土壤的调节剂，但是由于运输成本和味道，这个用途很快被禁止了。这个公司正在探讨其他可能的用途。

Plastic causes problems, because there are so many different types of plastic in use today, and each one has to be dealt with differently.

塑料产生了问题，因为现在有太多种在使用的塑料，每一种都要区别对待。

Pacrite recycles all sorts of things, from bottles to car bumpers, and one of its most successful activities is recycling plastic bottles to make containers which are used all over the country to collect waste.

派克莱特回收所有种类的东西，从瓶子到汽车保险杠，它最成功的活动之一是利用回收的塑料瓶子制成容器，这个容器在全国各地被用来装垃圾。

The Save-a-Cup scheme was set up by the vending and plastics industries to recycle as many as possible of the three-and-a-half billion polystyrene cups used each year.“

节约一个杯子”计划由销售和塑料行业发起，目的在于尽可能多的回收每年用掉的3,500,000,000个聚苯乙烯杯子。

At the moment 500 million polycups are collected, processed and sold on to other businesses, such as Waterford, which turns the cups into pencils, and Johnson & Jones, a Welsh-based firm, which has developed a wide variety of items, including business cards.

目前，5亿个塑料杯子被回收、加工并且销售到其他行业，比如沃特福德，把杯子转变为铅笔，而强生和琼斯，一个威尔士公司，已经开发了各种各样的产品，包括名片。

Well, to sum up, there seems to be plenty of research going on into how to re-use materials, but the biggest problem is getting people to think about recycling instead of throwing things away.

那么，总结一下，看起来好像有很多研究都在考察如何重复使用材料，但是最大的问题是让人们考虑回收，而不是扔掉东西。

At least doing the research made us much more careful.

至少，做这个研究能让我们更加注意。