Lesson 4 BITTER LITTER

1. In pairs, use any four of the words rhyming with «waste» and write a short four-line verse concerning the topic of the lesson. Present it in class and decide which one is better.

chaste, haste, taste, paste, faced, placed, amazed, based

2. Work in pairs. Think how you can sort out the issues discussed in the lecture of lesson 3 into the categories below. Note that some problems may be critical for more than one category. What do you think they are? Please, explain how and why.

Which of the problems discussed in lesson 3 do you think is of the greatest importance? Discuss your ideas in class.

3. Do you agree or disagree with the following note? How does it correspond to the lecture from lesson 3? What does the author mean by saying «there are still so many things we can do to try in what we already know»? Exchange your ideas in class.

The need for change in our daily lives and movements is growing. Because so many different factors come into play, many people don’t consider that what they do will affect future generations. If humans continue moving forward in such a harmful way towards the future, then there will be no future to consider. Although it’s true that we cannot physically stop our ozone layer from thinning, there are still so many things we can do to try in what we already know. By raising awareness in your local community and within your families about these issues, you can help contribute to a more environmentally conscious and friendly place for you to live.

4. Work in small groups. Go back to the phrase in italics in ex.3 and discuss who should care about the problems you sorted out in ex. 2.

Discuss your ideas in class. Do you all have the same ideas?

Responsibility of

5. Read the internet blog about one of the problems that are critical for the UK. Pay attention to the highlighted words. Can you guess their meanings or you need to consult a dictionary?

The amount of trash generated by the UK could fill Britain’s largest lake, Lake Windermere, in just eight months. Or, to put it another way, it could fill London’s Albert Hall in two hours.

Between 20% and 40% of fruit and vegetables are rejected by supermarkets because they’re misshapen or just weird-looking! But that’s how nature created them, right?

We use around 500 million plastic bags every week, and each will take between 500 and 1,000 years to decompose in landfill. However, Wales has reduced its plastic bag use by 90% simply by making the law for shops to charge 5p per bag.

At Christmas, as much as 83 square kilometres of wrapping paper end up in UK bins instead of being recycled. That’s the same size as Sunderland*!

Recycling is great, but reusing is better. It’s a shame that 83% of perfectly good sofas in the UK are sent to the dump or for recycling, rather than being given a second chance in a new home. If we could double the number of sofas reused in the UK we’d save around 52,000 tonnes of C02!

The number of disposable nappies each baby gets through weighs the same as a family car!

It would take you nearly 3,500 years to sing ’Six Billion Green Bottles’, which is how many glass bottles and jars we use every year! If those end up in landfill they’ll never decompose.

It’s not just what goes in the bin that counts as waste - water can be wasted, too. A single leaky tap in your house can waste as much as 5,000 litres of water a year. If we all fixed our dripping taps we could supply 120,000 people with a day’s worth of water; a pretty significant saving considering we may soon be drinking sewage (yes, really!).

Adapted from https://www.ovoenergy.com

In pairs, talk what could be done to make the situation better.

Do you think that Ukraine suffers from the same problems? Can you provide examples?

Share and discuss your ideas in class.

6. What environmental problem is critical for your neighbourhood or community? What is being done to handle the problem? Who is responsible? Make a brief description to present in class.

Did you know?

In 2012, the UK recycling rate of ’waste from households’ reached 43.9 %.