VOA标准英语2012--Bottles to Flake: Plastic’s Journey Continues

 

Bottles to Flake¹: Plastic’s Journey Continues

They traveled hundreds of kilometers before today. Now begins the next leg of a journey that spans the entire globe. Welcome to one of the United States’ largest plastic recycling plants.

“On an average week we receive anywhere from 1 to 1.5 million lbs [454,000 to 680,000 kg] of bottles in to the plant,” said Jay Chilton, who manages Clear Path Recycling’s monster facility in Fayetteville, North Carolina. “We receive about 8-10 trucks a day coming into the plant, and a truckload is usually about 40,000 pounds.”

That’s more than 18,000 kilograms of plastic every single day. The goods come in bales.

“These bales on average are about 900lbs [400 kg]; and they can range anywhere from 600lbs [270 kg] to 1500lbs [680 kg] in this configuration². This is accumulation of nearly 10-15 weeks of delivery,” Chilton said.

Nearly three football fields of plastic piled high sit just a short ride from the processing plant, where a bottle’s life is forever changed.

“This is where the whole bottles enter the whole bottle wash… it’s just like your front-end loading washing machine at your house. It’s just a lot longer, and a lot bigger,” Chilton said. 

Hot water washes the labels off of drink bottles and shakes out loose debris³.

“It’s kinda like your flour sifter⁴ at home where you’re sifting-out the big chunks⁵ of flour,” Chilton said.

Except these are big chunks of shredded⁶ plastic. Hundreds of thousands of kilograms of them. Industry insiders call them “P-E-T flake,” and it’s this product that another facility will buy, melt and mold into something else. The flake fills bags, trucks and is sometimes stored in skyscraping silos.

“These silos hold roughly 300 metric tons of PET flake, and the one we’re standing⁷ on now, we have about 150 metric tons of flake, and there’s three of these,” Chilton said. 

That means that at any one moment, nearly one kiloton of plastic flake waits here for its next evolution. 

1 flake   

v.使成薄片；雪片般落下；n.薄片

参考例句：

• Drain the salmon,discard the skin,crush the bones and flake the salmon with a fork.将鲑鱼沥干，去表皮，粉碎鱼骨并用餐叉子将鱼肉切成小薄片状。
• The paint's beginning to flake.油漆开始剥落了。

2 configuration   

n.结构，布局，形态，(计算机)配置

参考例句：

• Geographers study the configuration of the mountains.地理学家研究山脉的地形轮廓。
• Prices range from $119 to $199,depending on the particular configuration.价格因具体配置而异，从119美元至199美元不等。

3 debris   

n.瓦砾堆，废墟，碎片

参考例句：

• After the bombing there was a lot of debris everywhere.轰炸之后到处瓦砾成堆。
• Bacteria sticks to food debris in the teeth,causing decay.细菌附着在牙缝中的食物残渣上，导致蛀牙。

4 sifter   

n.（用于筛撒粉状食物的）筛具，撒粉器；滤器；罗圈；罗

参考例句：

• She sifted thistles through her thistle-sifter. 她用蓟筛筛蓟。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• This paper deals with a nitempering process of sifter mesh. 研究了一种筛片的软氮化工艺。 来自互联网

5 chunks   

厚厚的一块( chunk的名词复数 )； （某物）相当大的数量或部分

参考例句：

• a tin of pineapple chunks 一罐菠萝块
• Those chunks of meat are rather large—could you chop them up a bIt'smaller? 这些肉块相当大，还能再切小一点吗？

6 shredded   

shred的过去式和过去分词

参考例句：

• Serve the fish on a bed of shredded lettuce. 先铺一层碎生菜叶，再把鱼放上，就可以上桌了。
• I think Mapo beancurd and shredded meat in chilli sauce are quite special. 我觉得麻婆豆腐和鱼香肉丝味道不错。 来自《简明英汉词典》

7 standing   

n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的

参考例句：

• After the earthquake only a few houses were left standing.地震过后只有几幢房屋还立着。
• They're standing out against any change in the law.他们坚决反对对法律做任何修改。