北京分校

考试资讯

       考研英语阅读理解中的文章，很多来自一些外刊杂志方面的题材。接下来，北京文都考研网为扩宽2020考研学子的知识面，整理了考研英语经济学人:亚洲各国开始全面禁止洋垃圾，供考生参考。

2020考研英语经济学人:亚洲各国开始全面禁止洋垃圾

South-East Asian countries are banning imports of waste for recycling

东南亚各国正在禁止进口可回收垃圾

Too much of it is ending up in landfills or furnaces

太多的垃圾被填埋或焚烧了

There is no point collecting recyclable waste unless someone is willing to buy it and actually do the recycling. Until late 2017 China was the world’s biggest importer of scrap by far. This made sense.

除非有人愿意购买并回收利用垃圾，否则收集可回收垃圾毫无意义。直至2017年底，中国一直是全球最大的垃圾进口国。这是说得通的。

Like most other forms of manufacturing, recycling is cheaper there. Moreover, Chinese factories consumed lots of the resulting plastic and pulp, whereas developed economies, which tend to be net importers of goods, had plenty of plastic bottles and cardboard boxes to spare.

和其他大多数制造业一样，中国垃圾回收的成本更低。此外，中国工厂消耗了大量回收而来的塑料和纸浆，而发达国家(往往是商品的净进口国)则有大量的塑料瓶和纸箱可供回收利用。

It also helped that shipping to China was cheap, since ships would often otherwise return to the country with empty containers.

此外，运往中国的航运成本较低也是原因之一，因为如果不运送垃圾，货轮往往只能空载集装箱返回中国。

All this came to a halt when the Chinese government banned the import of all but the purest scrap material in 2017, killing a trade worth $24bn a year. Waste dealers in the rich world had to scramble to find new buyers. South-East Asia soon emerged as the pre-eminent destination for foreign waste.

2017年，一切都戛然而止了，中国政府禁止了除高纯废料之外的所有垃圾的进口，这项每年价值高达240亿美元的贸易就此中断。发达国家的垃圾回收商们只得争先恐后地寻找新的买家。东南亚便很快成为了洋垃圾的首选目的地。

Unfortunately, the region’s recycling industry is much smaller than China’s; its processing plants were quickly overwhelmed. Plastics from America and Europe have piled up in landfills. Lots of toxic rubbish has simply been torched.

但问题是，东南亚各国垃圾回收产业的规模远远小于中国;其垃圾回收处理工厂很快便应接不暇了。来自欧美的塑料垃圾被堆积在垃圾填埋场。大量有毒有害的垃圾只得草草地被焚烧处理。

South-East Asian governments are not pleased. They have begun to ban or crimp imports themselves, abruptly diminishing a booming business.

东南亚各国政府对此颇有成见。他们已经开始禁止或限制洋垃圾的进口了，蓬勃发展的垃圾回收业由此骤然萎缩。

On May 28th Yeo Bee Yin, Malaysia’s environment minister, complaining that “garbage [was] being traded under the pretext of recycling”, announced that her government would be sending back 3,000 tonnes of foreign plastic. Much of it was of poor quality, she noted, and hence unrecyclable.

5月28日，马来西亚环境部长杨美盈斥责“垃圾正在被人借回收之名做交易”，并宣称马来西亚政府将退返3000吨外国塑料。她还指出，这些垃圾的质地很差，根本就不能被回收利用。

Thailand plans to ban plastic-waste imports by 2021. Vietnam’s government has similar ideas. Kate O’Neill of the University of California, Berkeley, reckons these bans are motivated not only by environmental concerns but also by pride: Asia does not want to be the world’s dumping ground.

泰国计划到2021年全面禁止进口塑料垃圾。越南政府也有类似的想法。加州大学伯克利分校的凯特·阿尼尔认为，垃圾禁令不仅是出于环境方面的考虑，更多的是出于国家尊严的考虑：亚洲不想成为世界的垃圾场。

Rodrigo Duterte, the president of the Philippines, recently threatened to go to war with Canada if it did not take back a shipment of plastic scrap. Canada agreed to take it away, and Mr Duterte stopped blustering after an election had passed. All the same, rich-world exporters might want to start work on Plan C.

菲律宾总统罗德里戈·杜特尔特最近威胁称，如果加拿大不收回一批塑料垃圾，菲律宾将与加拿大开战。加拿大最终同意收回这批垃圾，而杜特尔特在大选结束后也不再咄咄逼人了。发达国家的垃圾出口商可能又开始准备实施C计划了。

 

【重难点词汇】

furnace ['fɝnɪs] n. 火炉，熔炉

container [kən'tenɚ] n. 集装箱，容器

scramble ['skræmbl] v. 爬，攀登，争抢，抢占 n. 攀登，抢夺，争夺

overwhelm [ovɚˈhwɛlm] vt. 淹没，压倒，受打击，覆盖，压垮

torch [tɔrtʃ] n. 火把，火炬;手电筒;启发之物 vi. 像火炬一样燃烧 vt. 用火炬点燃

crimp [krɪmp] v. 烫发，使卷曲，使有褶，阻碍……的发展 n. 卷发，皱褶，抑制，束缚

diminish [dɪ'mɪnɪʃ] vt. 使减少;使变小 vi. 减少，缩小;变小

pretext ['pritɛkst] n. 借口;托辞 vt. 以…为借口

bluster ['blʌstɚ] v. 咆哮，气势汹汹地说，呼啸，倾泻 n. 气势汹汹的话

       以上是北京文都考研网给出的“2020考研英语经济学人:亚洲各国开始全面禁止洋垃圾”，希望对备考2020考研英语的考生有所帮助!祝2020考研顺利!

推荐阅读：

2020考研英语经济学人外刊选集总结(6月)

2020考研英语时事阅读总结(6月)

2020考研英语同源外刊6月文章汇总