2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. II. READ THE FOLLOWING MAGAZINE ARTICL...

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

II. Read the following magazine article about ways of reducing the environmental harm we do.

Choose from the people A, B, C or D.

A. Carla

School student Carla Ruiz lives in a hot country and has become very aware of the need to save water.

“spring and autumn used to be quite wet, but these days it hardly rains at all”, she says. “Nearly all the rivers

have dried up, destroying all the wildlife in and around them, and no matter what we do they’ll never be the

same again. At least, though, we can use what little water there is more sensibly. That’s why at home I

recently decided to do simple things like making sure there are no dripping taps, or taps left on while I’m

brushing my teeth or washing food; also having showers instead of baths and not overwatering the plants.

Within a few days I was regularly doing these things without even thinking, and I know they made a

difference because the water bills went down quite a bit. My parents noticed that so they started doing the

same, and our bills are now a lot lower”

B. Vincent

Trainee manager, Vincent Owen, is doing his bit to save the planet by using less electricity around the

home. “I was talking to this guy at work and he told me that we waste a huge amount of energy every year

by leaving things like the TV, DVD and computer on standby all the time, so nowadays I try to remember –

not always successfully – to switch them off at night. Something I always do now, though, is keep the air-

conditioning off, even if I get a bit too sweaty here in summer.

Incidentally, I’ve now got solar panels on the roof so that all the hot water is powered by the sun. That was a

big investment, and it ended up well over budget, but I’m sure it’ll pay for itself in the end. I was hoping the

neighbors might go for solar energy too, but as yet there’s no sign they will.”

C. Lin

While Lin Chen is on a gap year, she is traveling round Europe with friends. “We had intended to fly

everywhere,” she says, “but when we worked out just how much extra pollution that would cause, we

decided to do it by train instead. It was cheaper, too.” They began their tour in Greece: “We all felt the

obvious place to start was where European civilization began, so our first rail journey began in Athens. We

traveled to Patras on the west coast, taking the ferry across to Bari in southern Italy. Unfortunately, it was

very windy and I had a bad case of sea-sickness, though, by the time we were on the train to Bologna, I’d

recovered. From there we took the overnight train to Paris, and a few days later we went on the Eurostar to

London. We saw far more of the countryside than we would have done by plane, and it was much more

relaxing, too.”

D. Tanya

Tanya Petrov works in a restaurant with an extensive menu, but at home she will only eat local or seasonal

food: “I strongly believe that transporting food thousands of kilometers, or storing it under refrigeration for

months on end, ultimately has a highly negative impact on the climate. I always try to buy food that is

produced locally and I have a special calendar to show me which kinds of food are in season so that I know

what I’m buying is really fresh. And I always check the “best-before” dates of fresh fruit and vegetables

before I choose them so I don’t end up having to throw any out. Apart from the environmental

considerations, I’m convinced the food I eat, which has far fewer chemicals in it, helps me avoid the kind of

illness that seems to be so common these days.”

Which person