美国国家公共电台 NPR We're Drowning In Plastic Trash. Jenna Jambeck Wants To Save Us

 

NOEL KING, HOST:

Plastic is both a wonder of modern technology and also one of the major environmental problems of our time. Plastic garbage is turning up everywhere. There are these massive floating garbage patches in the oceans. There are tiny pieces of plastic that end up in the food chain, including in our food. NPR's Christopher Joyce has the story of a woman who's telling the world how much plastic waste is out there and where it's coming from.

CHRISTOPHER JOYCE, BYLINE¹: I met Jenna Jambeck at her office at the University of Georgia for an interview. I was not expecting homework.

JENNA JAMBECK: So we were going to do for the next 24 hours is to record everything that you touch that is plastic.

JOYCE: I'm touching² something right now.

JAMBECK: So let's write it down.

JOYCE: My microphone holder³ - it's plastic.

JAMBECK: Yup. And your - this...

JOYCE: You mean the tape recorder?

JAMBECK: Yeah, the tape recorder.

JOYCE: A plastic ID card; the zipper⁴ on my bag.

JAMBECK: All right. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, and that was maybe three minutes.

JOYCE: This is going to be a long day (laughter).

JAMBECK: Probably.

JOYCE: Jenna Jambeck started her career as an environmental engineer specializing in waste management. She's a connoisseur⁵ of garbage dumps. She's taken me to one of her favorites near Athens, a couple of hours' drive from Atlanta.

We're sitting here at a dump, and I'm looking over...

JAMBECK: Landfill.

JOYCE: Excuse me - at the landfill.

Jambeck grew up in rural Minnesota. There was no garbage collection. She had to borrow a truck to take her family's trash to a dump every week.

JAMBECK: I was always pretty fascinated by going there and just seeing what I would see.

JOYCE: And that fascination⁶ with the stuff people throw away grew into a profession.

JAMBECK: I fell in love with studying waste.

(SOUNDBITE OF MOTOR RUMBLING)

JOYCE: So there's no getting out of the fact that I'm going to have to climb up onto this landfill. Jambeck's going to show me what plastic does in the landfill, or rather, what it doesn't do.

JAMBECK: Such a beautiful day out here.

JOYCE: Yeah, you could say so. The sun's shining. The vultures are flying overhead.

JAMBECK: It's gorgeous. All right. I want to go further.

JOYCE: OK.

She's wisely chosen to wear green rubber boots.

I'm just going to step where you step.

JAMBECK: (Laughter).

JOYCE: What I see is a mound⁷ of dirt and muck about 50 feet high at the top, covering several acres. Trucks are dumping their loads. Miscellaneous bits of trash poke⁸ up out of the ground.

JAMBECK: I see, like, a living, breathing thing. This whole system is actually an ecosystem⁹.

JOYCE: Microbes break down the organic garbage. Metal corrodes¹⁰ and dissolves. Most everything returns to the earth, except...

JAMBECK: Plastic would be the thing that doesn't break down.

JOYCE: The intruder.

JAMBECK: Yeah.

JOYCE: The stuff that's sitting out here is all plastic.

JAMBECK: Yeah.

JOYCE: Container of toothpaste. That looks like the top of a...

JAMBECK: Detergent¹¹ bottle.

JOYCE: PVC pipe, that looks like. Most plastic will break down into smaller pieces, eventually, but no one knows how long those pieces linger in the environment. And a lot of it ends up in the ocean. It collects in giant floating patches. People want to clean it up, and Jambeck says, sure, but wait a minute; let's find out where it's coming from.

JAMBECK: We sort of backed up and said, well, how much do we think is actually going in? And what we can do is to keep the waste out of the ocean in the first place.

JOYCE: No one really knew how much plastic was washing into oceans or just where it was coming from, but in a seminal¹² paper published three years ago in the journal Science, Jambeck figured it out. It made a big splash. The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee invited her to testify and to tell them just how bad the problem was.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Dr. Jambeck, you're next.

JAMBECK: Thank you, Chairman Sullivan, ranking member Whitehouse...

JOYCE: It was Jambeck's first appearance in Congress, but she came with hard information no one else had, and it was pretty shocking.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

JAMBECK: We estimated that 8 million metric tons of plastic entered the oceans in 2010. This is equal to a volume of five...

JOYCE: She held up a bag full of plastic trash.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

JAMBECK: ...Grocery-size bags filled with plastic for every foot of coastline in the world.

JOYCE: That's right - five bags for every foot of coastline in the world. Jambeck says half of that waste comes from China, the Philippines, Indonesia and Vietnam, countries with growing consumer economies but little waste management. Most of what shows up on beaches and in the ocean is single-use plastic - grocery bags, bottles and caps, straws, utensils¹³, packaging, mostly manufactured in the West. By Jambeck's calculations, in 2025, 10 times as much plastic could be going into the oceans.

JAMBECK: It seems to be that that's going to be our footprint in this time period. Is that really the story we want to tell future generations?

JOYCE: Jambeck is trying to change that story. She's been appointed by the U.S. State Department to be sort of a plastic ambassador who advises foreign governments on how to manage their plastic waste. She advises the Ocean Conservancy, an environmental group working to stem plastic waste. She says putting actual numbers on how much plastic waste there is has made a difference.

JAMBECK: Now around the world, people are reacting to that and trying to figure out what to do to have a positive impact.

JOYCE: Like looking for plastic substitutes for utensils or packaging and getting people to pay more attention to what they use and throw away and what they can recycle - and getting plastic out of landfills like this one. Jambeck met the man who would become her husband on top of a landfill. They were both doing research, digging into the very bottom of a landfill to see how things decompose¹⁴. They pulled up an immaculate piece of lunchmeat.

JAMBECK: It was a piece of bologna.

JOYCE: How do you know it was bologna?

JAMBECK: 'Cause it looked exactly like a piece of bologna from a package.

JOYCE: It was a bonding moment.

JAMBECK: We laughed at the bologna (laughter).

JOYCE: It's a hot afternoon, and the aroma¹⁵ is rising - volatile¹⁶ fatty acids, Jambeck explains. But then a truck arrives with a fresh load for a waiting bulldozer and compactor.

JAMBECK: So they're going to dump, and then the bulldozer is going to come and move it. And then the compactor gets his turn to drive over it.

JOYCE: OK. I don't need to wait to see all that.

JAMBECK: (Laughter) Oh, you just broke my heart.

JOYCE: Christopher Joyce, NPR News. Oh, wait a minute. My plastic count for 24 hours - I touched 52 items - credit card, restaurant menu, soap dispenser, my glasses, a ketchup¹⁷ container, an elevator button, a hotel chair, my computer, light switches, television remote, sandwich wrapper...

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

1 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。

2 touching   

adj.动人的，使人感伤的

参考例句：

• It was a touching sight.这是一幅动人的景象。
• His letter was touching.他的信很感人。

3 holder   

n.持有者，占有者；(台，架等)支持物

参考例句：

• The holder of the office of chairman is reponsible for arranging meetings.担任主席职位的人负责安排会议。
• That runner is the holder of the world record for the hundred-yard dash.那位运动员是一百码赛跑世界纪录的保持者。

4 zipper   

n.拉链；v.拉上拉链

参考例句：

• The zipper is red.这条拉链是红色的。
• The zipper is a wonderful invention.拉链是个了不起的发明。

5 connoisseur   

n.鉴赏家，行家，内行

参考例句：

• Only the real connoisseur could tell the difference between these two wines.只有真正的内行才能指出这两种酒的区别。
• We are looking for a connoisseur of French champagne.我们想找一位法国香槟酒品酒专家。

6 fascination   

n.令人着迷的事物，魅力，迷恋

参考例句：

• He had a deep fascination with all forms of transport.他对所有的运输工具都很着迷。
• His letters have been a source of fascination to a wide audience.广大观众一直迷恋于他的来信。

7 mound   

n.土墩，堤，小山；v.筑堤，用土堆防卫

参考例句：

• The explorers climbed a mound to survey the land around them.勘探者爬上土丘去勘测周围的土地。
• The mound can be used as our screen.这个土丘可做我们的掩蔽物。

8 poke   

n.刺，戳，袋；vt.拨开，刺，戳；vi.戳，刺，捅，搜索，伸出，行动散慢

参考例句：

• We never thought she would poke her nose into this.想不到她会插上一手。
• Don't poke fun at me.别拿我凑趣儿。

9 ecosystem   

n.生态系统

参考例句：

• This destroyed the ecosystem of the island.这样破坏了岛上的生态系统。
• We all have an interest in maintaining the integrity of the ecosystem.维持生态系统的完整是我们共同的利益。

10 corrodes   

v.使腐蚀，侵蚀( corrode的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• Corruption corrodes public confidence in a political system. 腐败可削弱公众对政治制度的信心。
• Iron corrodes unless it is greased or kept clean. 如果不涂油或保持清洁铁便会腐蚀。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

11 detergent   

n.洗涤剂；adj.有洗净力的

参考例句：

• He recommended a new detergent to me.他向我推荐一种新的洗涤剂。
• This detergent can remove stubborn stains.这种去污剂能去除难洗的污渍。

12 seminal   

adj.影响深远的；种子的

参考例句：

• The reforms have been a seminal event in the history of the NHS.这些改革已成为英国国民保健制度史上影响深远的一件大事。
• The emperor's importance as a seminal figure of history won't be diminished.做为一个开创性历史人物的重要性是不会减弱的。

13 utensils   

器具，用具，器皿( utensil的名词复数 )； 器物

参考例句：

• Formerly most of our household utensils were made of brass. 以前我们家庭用的器皿多数是用黄铜做的。
• Some utensils were in a state of decay when they were unearthed. 有些器皿在出土时已经残破。

14 decompose   

vi.分解；vt.（使）腐败，（使）腐烂

参考例句：

• The eggs began to decompose after a day in the sun.鸡蛋在太阳下放了一天后开始变坏。
• Most animals decompose very quickly after death.大多数动物死后很快腐烂。

15 aroma   

n.香气，芬芳，芳香

参考例句：

• The whole house was filled with the aroma of coffee.满屋子都是咖啡的香味。
• The air was heavy with the aroma of the paddy fields.稻花飘香。

16 volatile   

adj.反复无常的，挥发性的，稍纵即逝的，脾气火爆的；n.挥发性物质

参考例句：

• With the markets being so volatile,investments are at great risk.由于市场那么变化不定，投资冒着很大的风险。
• His character was weak and volatile.他这个人意志薄弱，喜怒无常。

17 ketchup   

n.蕃茄酱，蕃茄沙司

参考例句：

• There's a spot of ketchup on the tablecloth.桌布上有一点番茄酱的渍斑。
• Could I have some ketchup and napkins,please?请给我一些番茄酱和纸手巾？