题型：阅读理解 题类：模拟题 难易度：普通
广西北海市2019届高三英语第三次模拟考试试卷
If plastic had been invented when the Pilgrims sailed from Plymouth, England, to North America-and their Mayflower had been stocked with bottled water and plastic- wrapped snacks, their plastic waste would likely still be around four centuries later. Atlantic waves and sunlight would have worn all that plastic into tiny bits. And those bits might still be floating around the world's oceans today, waiting to be eaten by some fish or oyster, and finally perhaps by one of us.
Because plastic wasn't invented until the late 19th century, and its production only really took off around 1950, we have a mere 9.2 billion tons of the stuff to deal with. Of that, more than 6.9 billion tons have become waste. And of that waste, a surprising 6.3 billion tons never made it to a recycling bin-the figure that shocked the scientists who published the numbers in 2017.
No one knows how much unrecycled plastic waste ends up in the ocean, the earth's last sink. In 2015, Jenna Jam beck a University of Georgia engineering professor, caught everyone's attention with a rough estimate between 5.3 million and 14 million tons of plastic waste each year just come from coastal regions.
Meanwhile, ocean plastic is estimated to kill millions of marine(海洋的）animals every year. Nearly 700 species, including endangered ones, are known to have been affected by it. Some are harmed visibly, stuck by abandoned things made of plastic. Many more are probably harmed invisibly. Marine species of all sizes, from zooplankton to whales, now eat microplas-tics, the bits smaller than one-fifth of an inch across.
"This isn't a problem where we don't know what the solution is, "says Ted Siegler, a Vermont resource economist who has spent more than 25 years working with developing nations on garbage." We know how to pick up garbage. Anyone can do it. We know how to deal with it. We know how to recycle. "It's a matter of building the necessary institutions and systems, he says, ideally before the ocean turns into a thin soup of plastic.
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