★★☆Mealworms Can Eat Plastic Waste
2015年11月20日 ★★☆, News Articles, Science & Health, Science in the News, VOA.
*Teachers will divide the article into 2-3 paragraphs to help you understand and check the pronunciation of the difficult words.
Vocabulary
*Read the words carefully.
- recycle/riˈsaɪkəl/(adj.)
- Styrofoam/ˈstaɪrəˌfoʊm/(n.)
- bran /ˈbræn/ (n.)
- digest /daɪˈʤɛst/ (v.)
- What do you think about this scientific breakthrough?
- What other animals do you think are useful to nature?
- Do you think this discovery could be the solution of the world’s waste problem?
to make something new from something that has been used before
used for a type of plastic that is light and usually white
the outer coat of the seed of a grain
to change food that you have eaten by a biological process into simpler forms that can be used by the body
Article
Mealworms Can Eat Plastic Waste
* Read the text below
(click right and save)
(1) Styrofoam is a plastic with a bad reputation.
(2) It cannot be recycled without releasing dangerous pollution into the air. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says it is the fifth-largest creator of hazardous waste.
(3) Worms to the rescue. Specifically, mealworms.
(4) Scientists from the U.S. and China have discovered that mealworms can digest plastic. One mealworm can digest a pill-sized amount of plastic a day.
(5) Study co-author Wei-Min Wu says that in 24 hours, the plastic is turned into carbon dioxide.
(6) Are the worms hurt by eating plastic? The study found that worms eating Styrofoam were as healthy as worms eating bran.
(7) The researchers will study the worm’s eating habits and look to duplicate the plastic breakdown but on a larger scale.
(8) Styrofoam, or polystyrene, is a light-weight material, about 95 percent air, with very good insulation properties, according to Earthsource.org. It is used in products from cups that keep your beverages hot or cold to packaging material that protects items during shipping.
(9) Solving the issue of plastic pollution is important says Wu, a Stanford University environmental engineering instructor. Landfill space is becoming limited, he says.
(10) About 33-million tons of plastic are thrown away in the United States every year. Plastic plates, cups and containers take up 25 percent to 30 percent of space in America’s landfills. One Styrofoam cup takes more than 1 million years to recycle in a landfill, according to Cleveland State University.
Discussion
*Let’s talk about the article base on the questions below
Tags: environmental issues, Global warming, Nature