【大問２ 読解問題】
Read this article and answer the questions below.
Rushing onto the open-air property in late May, officers from the Royal Thai Police found undocumented workers from Laos and Myanmar engaged in dangerous work that exposed them to blasts of toxic fumes and dust-a common risk in their illegal and booming international trade.
The products these workers handled, however, were not drugs like heroin but vast piles of old computers, electrical wires, and circuit boards. And it's very likely that much of this electronic waste came from one of the world's biggest producers: the United States.
E-waste has become the world's fastest-growing trash stream. For all of us who have thrown out a phone or computer for a newer, better model, the reasons are hardly a mystery. Still, the growth is astonishing: The worldwide accumulation of e-waste has more than doubled in the last nine years.
In 2016, according to the United Nations University (U.N.U.), a global think tank that tracks the problem, the yearly accumulation reached 49.3 million tons-( A ) 18-wheel trucks stretching from New York to Bangkok and back. By 2021, the annual total is predicted to be over 57 million tons.
The explosion of e-waste highlights its dual (and dueling) identities as both environmental challenge and potential economic resource. Though often containing lead, mercury, and other poisonous substances, laptops and phones also contain elements like gold, silver, and copper that ( B ).
Yet barely 20 percent of the world's e-waste is collected and delivered to formal recyclers. The fate of the rest is largely unknown. Only 41 nations publish e-waste statistics, and their partial data can't keep up with the expansion of electronic devices into so many products, from toys and toilets to watches and refrigerators.
In the United States, which generated an estimated 6.9 million tons of e-waste in 2016 (42 pounds per person), most e-waste probably goes straight into the trash. By one account, e-waste makes up just 2 percent of the total volume at American garbage sites - but more than two-thirds of relatively valuable heavy metals.
The United States has no national law for managing e-waste, leaving the issue to individual states. (Fifteen states still have no e-waste legislation in effect.) The European Union, by contrast, has some of the toughest enforcement of e-waste laws in the world, banning exports to developing countries and forcing manufacturers to help fund recycling. Europe's recycling rates for electronics-around 35 percent overall -are much higher than the American rate. "The U.S. has always been the elephant in the room that nobody wants to talk about," says Deepali Sinha Khetriwal, a Mumbai-based research associate at U.N.U. "Until it decides to play a part, we can't really solve the problem of e-waste shipments."
A significant but ultimately unknown portion of American e-waste is quietly exported, mostly to Asia. ( C ) The expression "reuse and repair" is often used to hide illegal exports of e-waste. This is supposedly garbage, but the extraordinary amount of dangerous e-waste activity in Pakistan and Ghana, for example, indicates the riches hidden in the piles of old electronics. According to researchers at U.N.U., the raw materials contained in e-waste were valued at roughly 61 billion dollars in 2016, more than the gross domestic product of even middle-income countries like Croatia and Costa Rica.
The idea of "mining" e-waste has appealed to the recycling and electronics industries for decades. Until recently, most methods to recover valuable components have been costly, inefficient, and dangerous. Backyard recyclers in places like India and Indonesia recover gold by bathing circuit boards in nitric and hydrochloric acid, thus poisoning waterways and communities. Others, like the foreign workers in Thailand, break down used electronics with cooking stoves and shredding machines and wear no masks or other protection,
Over the last few years, however, innovators have devised safer techniques in the lab for recovering valuable components from e-waste. As the recovery of metals becomes more efficient and eco-friendly, tech manufacturers may feel pressure to get raw materials from their own end-of-life products rather than from the earth. Apple, for instance, has promised to make all of its future laptops and iPhones out of renewable resources or recycled materials. The idea goes beyond business to national security.
"Governments are starting to take a more strategic view of e-waste, too," Khetriwal says. "They ask, 'How can we secure the raw materials we need for the future?'" Some of these metals and rare-earth elements are scarce, and some, like cobalt, are found mostly in conflict zones. By mining the ever-expanding mountains of e-waste, countries could prepare themselves for the instability of prices and supplies in the global market.
Some e-waste optimists envision a "circular economy" in which reused and recycled raw materials help a sustainable future. Japan was an early leader of this movement, ( D ) e-waste recycling with tough laws and, more recently, ( E ) an appealing strategy for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo. The idea is for winning athletes to receive gold, silver, and bronze medals made from recycled e-waste---symbolic of a world in which e-waste can take on the gleam of permanent glory.
To move toward a circular economy, manufacturers would also need to embrace a "green design" that minimizes the generation of e-waste in the first place. Companies like Apple and Dell, though, have not taken enough measures to make their products easier to use for a longer period of time. "Planned obsolescence," the intentional creation of products that rapidly become outdated so customers must replace them with ever-newer models, remains standard procedure for the tech industry.
Manufacturers argue that the approach stimulates not only profits but also the very innovation that drives the global economy. And it has produced a Pavlovian response in consumers, for whom the temptation to buy a slightly cooler phone every couple of years has hardened into a seeming necessity. Not long ago, one tech manufacturer introduced a cheaper, longer-lasting phone---the perfect antidote to planned obsolescence. It was not a great success---but it was a good reminder that we all share some responsibility for the explosion of e-waste in scrapyards across the world.
Title：Adapted from e-waste offers an economic opportunity as well as toxicity
Author：Brook Larmer
Website：The New York Times
Date:2018
URL：
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/05/magazine/e-waste-offers-an-economic-opportunity-as-well-as-toxicity.html
Reading：
大問２ 設問１：Choose the most suitable answer from those below to fill in blank space ( A ) in the best way.
(a) able to drive
(b) easy to move
(c) enough to fill
(d) hard to stop
(e) only to find
大問２ 設問２：Use six of the seven words below to fill in blank space ( B ) in the best way. Indicate your choices for the second, fourth, and sixth positions.
(a) a
(b) are
(c) for
(d) lot
(e) money
(f) of
(g) worth
大問２ 設問３：Choose the most suitable answer from those below to complete the following sentence.
Regarding e-waste, the writer notes that
(a) American laws dealing with it are the same across all 50 states.
(b) it consists of both dangerous materials and valuable components.
(c) more than half is now being recycled worldwide.
(d) only 41 countries currently produce complete and accurate records.
(e) the amount produced is growing slowly year by year.
大問２ 設問４：Choose the most suitable order of sentences from those below to fill in blank space ( C ).
(a) But in January, Beijing imposed a widespread ban on the import of e-waste as part of its "National Sword” campaign to cut the levels of what it calls "foreign garbage."
(b) Even before it came into full effect, Chinese waste traders were setting up shop in Thailand.
(c) Until last year, China was handling an estimated 70 percent of the world's e-waste.
大問２ 設問５：Choose the most suitable answer from those below to complete the following sentence.
According to Deepali Sinha Khetriwal, governments are beginning to
(a) act more aggressively in their negotiations with mine owners.
(b) force companies to use only recycled materials.
(c) prepare for military conflict to secure rare resources.
(d) realize that metals and rare-earth elements may soon become worthless.
(e) show greater interest in e-waste with national security in mind.
大問２ 設問６：Choose the most suitable pair of words from those below to fill in blank spaces ( D ) and ( E ).
(a) containing-covering
(b) destroying-demanding
(c) explaining-extending
(d) promoting presenting
(e) removing-refusing
大問２ 設問７：Choose the most suitable answer from those below to complete the following sentence.
According to the writer, tech manufacturers claim that "planned obsolescence”
(a) discourages consumers from buying new products.
(b) encourages technological advances that benefit the economy.
(c) generates profits that make it possible to hire more employees.
(d) leads to the production of phones that are cheap and long-lasting,
(e) results in a manufacturing process that reduces e-waste.
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