Cambridge Textbook pg. 80: Sample Question 3

Textbook Sample Question 3 (Pages 80-82)

Text D Text D is from a website, www.coastalcare.org, that concerns itself with environmental matters.

When the mermaids cry: The great plastic tide By Claire Le Guern Last updated in March 2018. The world population is living, working, vacationing, increasingly conglomerating along the coasts, and standing on the front row of the greatest, most unprecedented, plastic waste tide ever faced. [...] For more than 50 years, global production and consumption of plastics have continued to rise. An estimated 299 million tonnes of plastics were produced in 2013, representing 4 percent increase over 2012, and confirming an upward trend over the past years. In 2008, our global plastic consumption worldwide has been estimated at 260 million tonnes, and, according to a 2012 report by Global Industry Analysts, plastic consumption is to reach 297.5 million tonnes by the end of 2015. Plastic is versatile, lightweight, flexible, moisture resistant, strong, and relatively inexpensive. Those are the attractive qualities that lead us, around the world, to such a voracious appetite and over-consumption of plastic goods. However, durable and very slow to degrade, plastic materials that are used in the production of so many products all, ultimately, become waste with staying power. Our tremendous attraction to plastic, coupled with an undeniable behavioural propensity of increasingly over-consuming, discarding, littering and thus polluting, has become a combination of lethal nature. A simple walk on any beach, anywhere, and the plastic waste spectacle is present. All over the world the statistics are everer growing, staggeringly. Tonnes of plastic debris (which by definition are waste that can vary in size from large containers, fishing nets to microscopic plastic pellets or even particles) is discarded every year, everywhere, polluting lands, rivers, coasts, beaches, and oceans. Published in the journal Science in February 2015, a study [...] quantified the input of plastic waste from land into the ocean. The results: every year, 8 million metric tonnes of plastic end up in our oceans. It's equivalent to five grocery bags filled with plastic for every foot of coastline in the world. In 2025, the annual input is estimated to be about twice greater, or 10 bags full of plastic per foot of coastline. So the cumulative input for 2025 would be nearly 20 times the 8 million metric tonnes estimate - 100 bags of plastic per foot of coastline in the world! Lying halfway between Asia and North America, north of the Hawaiian archipelago, and surrounded by water for thousands of miles on all sides, the Midway Atoll is about as remote as a place can get. However, Midway's isolation has not spared it from the great plastic tide either, receiving massive quantities of plastic debris, shot out from the North Pacific circular motion of currents (gyre). Midway's beaches, covered with large debris and millions of plastic particles in place ofthe sand, are suffocating, envenomed by the slow plastic poison continuously washing ashore. Then, on shore, the spectacle becomes even more poignant, as thousands of bird corpses rest on these beaches, piles of colourful plastic remaining where there stomachs had been. In some cases, the skeleton had entirely biodegraded; yet the stomach-size plastic piles are still present, intact. [...] 81 4 82 Paper 1: Reading Exam tip It is estimated that of the 1.5 million Laysan Albatrosses which inhabit Midway, all ofthem have plastic in their digestive system; for one third of the chicks, the plastic blockage is deadly, coining Midway Atoll as "albatross graveyards" by five media artists, led by photographer Chris Jordan, who recently filmed and photographed the catastrophic effects of the plastic pollution there. [...] In a 2006 report, Plastic Debris in the World's Oceans, Greenpeace stated that at least 267 different animal species are known to have suffered from entanglement and ingestion of plastic debris. According to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, plastic debris kills an estimated 100,000 marine mammals annually, as well as millions of birds and fishes. [...]

It is estimated that of the 1.5 million Laysan Albatrosses which inhabit Midway, all of them have plastic in their digestive system; for one third of the chicks, the plastic blockage is deadly, coining Midway Atoll as "albatross graveyards" by five media artists, led by photographer Chris Jordan, who recently filmed and photographed the catastrophic effects of the plastic pollution there. [...]

In a 2006 report, Plastic Debris in the World's Oceans, Greenpeace stated that at least 267 different animal species are known to have suffered from entanglement and ingestion of plastic debris. According to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, plastic debris kills an estimated 100,000 marine mammals annually, as well as millions of birds and fishes. [...]

However, most of the littered plastic waste worldwide ultimately ends up at sea. Swirled by currents, plastic litter accumulates over time at the centre of major ocean vortices forming "garbage patches", i.e. larges masses of ever-accumulating floating debris fields across the seas. The most well known of these "garbage patches" is the Great North Pacific Garbage Patch, discovered and brought to media and public attention in 1997 by Captain Charles Moore. The plastic waste tide we are faced with is not only obvious for us to clearly see washed up on shore or bobbing at sea. Most disconcertingly, the overwhelming amount and mass of marine plastic debris is beyond visual, made of microscopic range fragmented plastic debris that cannot be just scooped out of the ocean.

1a: Write the text of a leaflet designed for young people to make them more aware of the environmental issues involved with plastic. Write between 150-200 words.

1b: Compare the language and style of your response in 1a with the language and style of the Text D below.

Text D Text D is from a website, www.coastalcare.org, that concerns itself with environmental matters.

When the mermaids cry: The great plastic tide By Claire Le Guern Last updated in March 2018. The world population is living, working, vacationing, increasingly conglomerating along the coasts, and standing on the front row of the greatest, most unprecedented, plastic waste tide ever faced. [...] For more than 50 years, global production and consumption of plastics have continued to rise. An estimated 299 million tonnes of plastics were produced in 2013, representing 4 percent increase over 2012, and confirming an upward trend over the past years. In 2008, our global plastic consumption worldwide has been estimated at 260 million tonnes, and, according to a 2012 report by Global Industry Analysts, plastic consumption is to reach 297.5 million tonnes by the end of 2015. Plastic is versatile, lightweight, flexible, moisture resistant, strong, and relatively inexpensive. Those are the attractive qualities that lead us, around the world, to such a voracious appetite and over-consumption of plastic goods. However, durable and very slow to degrade, plastic materials that are used in the production of so many products all, ultimately, become waste with staying power. Our tremendous attraction to plastic, coupled with an undeniable behavioural propensity of increasingly over-consuming, discarding, littering and thus polluting, has become a combination of lethal nature. A simple walk on any beach, anywhere, and the plastic waste spectacle is present. All over the world the statistics are everer growing, staggeringly. Tonnes of plastic debris (which by definition are waste that can vary in size from large containers, fishing nets to microscopic plastic pellets or even particles) is discarded every year, everywhere, polluting lands, rivers, coasts, beaches, and oceans. Published in the journal Science in February 2015, a study [...] quantified the input of plastic waste from land into the ocean. The results: every year, 8 million metric tonnes of plastic end up in our oceans. It's equivalent to five grocery bags filled with plastic for every foot of coastline in the world. In 2025, the annual input is estimated to be about twice greater, or 10 bags full of plastic per foot of coastline. So the cumulative input for 2025 would be nearly 20 times the 8 million metric tonnes estimate - 100 bags of plastic per foot of coastline in the world! Lying halfway between Asia and North America, north of the Hawaiian archipelago, and surrounded by water for thousands of miles on all sides, the Midway Atoll is about as remote as a place can get. However, Midway's isolation has not spared it from the great plastic tide either, receiving massive quantities of plastic debris, shot out from the North Pacific circular motion of currents (gyre). Midway's beaches, covered with large debris and millions of plastic particles in place ofthe sand, are suffocating, envenomed by the slow plastic poison continuously washing ashore. Then, on shore, the spectacle becomes even more poignant, as thousands of bird corpses rest on these beaches, piles of colourful plastic remaining where there stomachs had been. In some cases, the skeleton had entirely biodegraded; yet the stomach-size plastic piles are still present, intact. [...] 81 4 82 Paper 1: Reading Exam tip It is estimated that of the 1.5 million Laysan Albatrosses which inhabit Midway, all ofthem have plastic in their digestive system; for one third of the chicks, the plastic blockage is deadly, coining Midway Atoll as "albatross graveyards" by five media artists, led by photographer Chris Jordan, who recently filmed and photographed the catastrophic effects of the plastic pollution there. [...] In a 2006 report, Plastic Debris in the World's Oceans, Greenpeace stated that at least 267 different animal species are known to have suffered from entanglement and ingestion of plastic debris. According to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, plastic debris kills an estimated 100,000 marine mammals annually, as well as millions of birds and fishes. [...]

It is estimated that of the 1.5 million Laysan Albatrosses which inhabit Midway, all of them have plastic in their digestive system; for one third of the chicks, the plastic blockage is deadly, coining Midway Atoll as "albatross graveyards" by five media artists, led by photographer Chris Jordan, who recently filmed and photographed the catastrophic effects of the plastic pollution there. [...]

In a 2006 report, Plastic Debris in the World's Oceans, Greenpeace stated that at least 267 different animal species are known to have suffered from entanglement and ingestion of plastic debris. According to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, plastic debris kills an estimated 100,000 marine mammals annually, as well as millions of birds and fishes. [...]

However, most of the littered plastic waste worldwide ultimately ends up at sea. Swirled by currents, plastic litter accumulates over time at the centre of major ocean vortices forming "garbage patches", i.e. larges masses of ever-accumulating floating debris fields across the seas. The most well known of these "garbage patches" is the Great North Pacific Garbage Patch, discovered and brought to media and public attention in 1997 by Captain Charles Moore. The plastic waste tide we are faced with is not only obvious for us to clearly see washed up on shore or bobbing at sea. Most disconcertingly, the overwhelming amount and mass of marine plastic debris is beyond visual, made of microscopic range fragmented plastic debris that cannot be just scooped out of the ocean.