In 1993, New York State ordered stores to charge a deposit on beverage (=drink) containers. Within a year, consumers had returned millions of aluminum cans and glass and plastic bottles. Plenty of companies were eager to accept the aluminum and glass as raw material for new products, but because few could figure out what to do with the plastic, much of it would end up buried in landfills(垃圾填埋场). The problem was not limited to New York. Unfortunately, there were too few uses for second-hand plastic.
Today, one out of five plastic soda bottles is recycled in the United States. The reason for the change is that now there are dozens of companies across the country buying discarded plastic soda bottles and turning them into fence post, paint brushes, etc.
As the New York experience shows, recycling involves more than simply separating valuable materials from the rest of the rubbish. A discard remains a discard unti1 somebody figures out how to give it a second life — and until economic arrangements exist to give that second life va1ue.Without adequate markets to absorb materials collected for recycling, throwaways actually depress prices for used materials.
Shrinking landfill space and rising costs for burying and burning rubbish are forcing local governments to look more closely at recycling. In many areas, the East Coast especially, recycling is already the least expensive waste-management option. For every ton of waste recycled, a city avoids paying for its disposal, which, in parts of New York, amounts to savings of more than $100 per ton. Recycling also stimulates the local economy by creating jobs and reduces the pollution control and energy costs of industries that make recycled products by giving them a more refined raw material.
What regulation was issued by New York State concerning beverage containers?
A. A fee should be charged on used containers for recycling.
B. Throwaways should be collected by the state for recycling.
C. Consumers had to pay for beverage containers and could get their money back on returning them.
D. Beverage companies should be responsible for collecting and reusing discarded plastic soda bottles.
The returned plastic bottles in New York used to .
A. be turned into raw materia1s
B. be separated from other rubbish
C. have a second-life value
D. end up somewhere underground
The key problem in dealing with returned plastic beverage containers is .
A. how to reduce their recycling costs
B. to sell them at a profitable price
C. how to turn them into useful things
D. to lower the prices for used materials
Recycling has become the first choice for the disposal of rubbish because .
A. recycling causes litt1e pollution
B. other methods are more expensive
C. recycling has great appeal for the jobless
D. local governments find it easy to manage
It can be concluded from the passage that .
A. recycling is to be recommended both economically and environmentally
B. local governments in the U. S. can expect big profits from recycling
C. rubbish is a potential remedy for the shortage of raw materials
D. landfills will sti1l be widely used for waste disposal