第1511期:Planet Plastic

Here’s a staggering statistic. Scientists have calculated the total amount of plastic ever made: 8.3 billion tonnes. Looked at another way, that’s as heavy as 25,000 Empire State Buildings or one billion elephants. And incredibly, almost all of it has been made in the last 65 years. 

这是一个惊人的统计数据。科学家计算出塑料的总量：83亿吨。换个角度看，它有 25,000 座帝国大厦或 10 亿头大象那么重。令人难以置信的是，几乎所有这些都是在过去 65 年中完成的。

So what’s the problem? Much plastic is in the form of packaging which is used just once and then thrown away. According to a major new study from the University of California, 9% of this is recyled, 12% is incinerated and 79% goes to landfill. And because most plastic doesn’t biodegrade, once it’s in the ground, it stays there. 

所以有什么问题？很多塑料都是包装形式，只使用一次就扔掉了。根据加州大学的一项重大新研究，其中 9% 被回收利用，12% 被焚烧，79% 进入垃圾填埋场。而且由于大多数塑料不会生物降解，因此一旦进入地下，就会一直存在。

It’s a situation that has led the paper’s lead author, ecologist Dr Roland Geyer, to say that we are “rapidly heading towards ‘Planet Plastic'”. He believes that there’s already enough waste out there to cover the whole of Argentina.

正是这种情况导致该论文的主要作者、生态学家 Roland Geyer 博士说我们“正在迅速走向‘塑料星球’”。他认为那里的垃圾已经足够覆盖整个阿根廷。

The team behind this report also estimate that eight million tonnes of plastic waste are escaping into the sea every year. This has generated concern that plastic is entering the food chain, though fish and other sea life which ingest the smaller fragments.

该报告背后的团队还估计，每年有 800 万吨塑料垃圾流入大海。这引起了人们对塑料正在进入食物链的担忧，尽管鱼类和其他海洋生物会摄入较小的碎片。

Of course, the reason why there’s so much plastic around is that it’s an amazingly useful material. We can’t get enough of it. It’s durable and adaptable, and is used for everything from yoghurt pots to spaceships. But it’s precisely this quality which makes it a problem. The only way to destroy plastic is to heat or burn it – although this has the side effect of harmful emissions.

当然，周围有这么多塑料的原因是它是一种非常有用的材料。我们受够了。它耐用且适应性强，可用于从酸奶罐到宇宙飞船的所有物品。但正是这种品质使它成为一个问题。破坏塑料的唯一方法是加热或燃烧它——尽管这会产生有害排放的副作用。

So what’s the alternative, other than using less plastic? Oceanographer Dr Erik van Sebille from Utrecht University says we’re facing a “tsunami” of plastic waste, and that the global waste industry needs to “get its act together”.

那么除了使用更少的塑料之外，还有什么选择呢？乌得勒支大学的海洋学家 Erik van Sebille 博士说，我们正面临着塑料垃圾的“海啸”，全球垃圾行业需要“齐心协力”。

Professor Richard Thompson, a marine biologist from Plymouth University, says it’s poor design that’s at fault. He says that if products are currently designed “with recyclability in mind”, they could be recyled around 20 times over.

普利茅斯大学的海洋生物学家理查德汤普森教授说，糟糕的设计是错误的。他说，如果产品目前的设计“考虑到可回收性”，它们可以回收大约 20 倍。

Dr Geyer agrees: “The holy grail of recycling is to keep material in use and in the loop for ever if you can. But it turns out in our study that actually 90% of that material that did get recycled - which I think we calculated was 600 million tonnes - only got recycled once.”

Geyer 博士对此表示赞同：“回收的圣杯是尽可能地保持材料的使用和循环。但在我们的研究中发现，实际上 90% 的材料确实被回收了——我认为我们计算出来的量是 6 亿吨——只被回收了一次。”

词汇表

staggering 令人震惊的
packaging 包装材料
incinerate 被焚毁的
landfill 垃圾填埋场
biodegrade 生物降解
ecologist 生态学家
food chain 食物链
ingest 咽下（食物）
fragment 碎片，碎块
durable 耐用的
adaptable 适应性强的
emission 排放物
oceanographer 海洋学家
tsunami 海啸
get your act together 合理安排，有条理地筹划
marine biologist 海洋生物学家
at fault 有责任，有过错
recyclability 可再利用性
loop 循环
turn out 结果是（尤指出乎意料的结果）