本集内容

Turning chewing gum into useful objects 嚼过的口香糖“变废为宝”

学习要点

有关“recycling 回收利用”的词汇

边看边答

What is most chewing gum made of?

文字稿

Chewing gum is the second most common litter on the streets after cigarettes.

口香糖是仅次于香烟，最常见的街头垃圾。

Councils spend millions each year cleaning it up. But one designer based at the Design Museum in London has a plan to deal with the problem. It all began with an experiment taking random samples of street litter.

英国地方政府每年要花百万英镑来清理它们。但一位来自伦敦设计博物馆的设计师想出了一个解决此问题的方法。这一切都是从她对街头垃圾进行随机取样的试验开始的。

Anna Bullus, Designer
"I could find pretty much programmes for recycling for a lot of the litters apart from a piece of chewing gum that I picked up."

安娜·布尔斯，设计师
“我能找到回收大部分垃圾的项目，但唯独找不到处理我捡到的一块口香糖的方式。”

Most chewing gum on our streets is in fact made of synthetic rubber. So chewing gum is potentially a versatile and useful material for lots of manufacturing processes.

出现在我们街头的大多数口香糖都由合成橡胶制成。所以口香糖可能被变成一种用途广泛的材料，用于制造加工的生产过程中。

But how do you capture it before it sticks to the ground? Well, that's where the special bins come in. They are themselves made out of recycled chewing gum.

但你如何能在口香糖被粘在地上之前获取它呢？这正是“特制垃圾桶”存在的意义了。这些用来装嚼完的口香糖的垃圾桶就是由回收的口香糖制成的。

The University of Winchester is one of several institutions that have signed up to use the bins.

温彻斯特大学是加入使用这种特制垃圾桶的几所大学之一。

A lot of the gum is turned into these reusable hot drink cups. These are given out to first-year students to hammer home the message that recycled gum can be turned into something useful - if it's not simply dropped on the floor.

回收的大部分口香糖被做成了可重复使用的热饮杯。这些杯子被分发给读大一的学生，从而使他们清楚地了解回收口香糖可以“变废为宝”，只要不把它们随地乱扔掉。

In order to gain its new lease of life, the old gum is first taken to a recycling plant. Then it gets turned into the new objects.

为了使这些嚼过的口香糖“重获新生”，它们先要被送去回收厂，接着被制成新的物品。

As well as the cups and bins, these include some eye-catching designs. But the main goal is to educate and clean up the environment.

包括制成的杯子和垃圾桶，这些“新生宝物”的设计非常引人注目。然而，此举的主要目的是为了敦促人们文明地处理嚼完的口香糖，清理环境。

词汇

litter
垃圾

versatile
用途广泛的

to hammer home
解释清楚

new lease of life
新生

eye-catching
抢眼的，引人注目的

你知道吗？

A 5,000-year-old piece of chewing gum has been discovered by an archaeology student on a dig in western Finland. Neolithic people used the material as an antiseptic to treat gum infections, as well as a glue for repairing pots.

一块有着五千年历史的口香糖在芬兰西部的一次挖掘中，被一名考古系的学生发现。生活在新石器时代的人们把这种材料作为治疗牙龈感染的抗菌剂，以及作为修复各种盆盆罐罐的黏合剂。