Exercise 55 Read two newspaper articles. a) Tell your groupmates about your eating habits.

In recent years I have become more thoughtful about my food. Now I avoid certain things – namely, chicken and beef from the average supermarket.

I belong to a new demographic called ethical eaters*. We join the Slow Food movement and buy books like Eating with Conscience, Portrait of a Burger as a Young Calf, and – one of this year’s most talked about books – Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s* Dilemma. We want our food to have been happy in death. At the same time, we want it so fresh and unprocessed that it still tastes, and nourishes us, like it is full of life.

Boston Magazine, July 1, 2006

*ethical eater n A person who only or mostly eats food that meets certain ethical guidelines, particularly organically grown food and humanely raised meat, poultry, and fish.

*omnivore n An animal or a person that eats all types of food.

b) Is it possible to launch a similar campaign in your native city? Ground your opinion.

Two dozen area communities could be saving money under a program promoted by the state Department of Environmental Protection as a way to reduce the amount of trash.

Known as ‘pay as you throw*,’ the program has been around for more than a decade. Residents buy special garbage bags or stickers for their trash barrels so that the more they toss, the more they pay. Conversely, the more they recycle, the more they save.

State officials said communities that institute the program find as much as a 35 percent reduction in the amount of trash they ship out.
The Boston Globe, February 22, 2007

*pay as you throw adj A fee based on how much garbage a household or business generates; a program that implements such a fee.

It’s interesting to know…

Don’t waste your waste!

Garbage generates enough methane and greenhouse gases to produce electricity to heat 3,000 homes.

Every ton of steel recycled saves more than a ton and a half of iron ore.

You can save about 400 kilowatt hours of electricity a year by recycling the newspapers, glass, steel, aluminium and plastic soft drink bottles used by an average household.

Nega, not mega!

A negawatt hour is a kilowatt hour of electricity that is not produced because people improved their energy efficiency or conserved energy. Each negawatt hour is valuable because it produces no greenhouse gas or other pollutant. And it’s free!

The newly-coined termeco-driving includes such tips: don’t carry unnecessary loads, speed up and break smoothly, engage the appropriate gear for your road speed, don’t leave the engine idling unnecessarily, use the engine to break when you can, and drive at the most fuel-efficient speeds. Which are the most effective? Discuss it in your group.