📙 Part 2: Describe a time when you saw a lot of plastic waste

This episode's vocabulary

Consequently (adverb) - as a result; therefore.

Overwhelming (adj.) - difficult to fight against.

Beachfront (noun) - a strip of land along a beach.

To wash up (phrasal verb) - to appear on land because the ocean or a river or lake left it there.

Shoreline (noun) - shoreline.

Inwards (adverb) - towards the inside.

Current (noun) - a movement of water, air, or electricity in a particular direction.

Coastal (adj.) - positioned on, or relating to the coast.

To toss (verb) - to throw something carelessly.

To dump (verb) - to get rid of something unwanted, especially by leaving it in a place where it is not allowed to be.

En masse (adverb) - if a group of people do something en masse, they do it together and at the same time.

Forgettable (adj.) - not important or good enough to be remembered.

To make a mental note of something - to make an effort to remember something.

Inescapable (adj.) - if a fact or a situation is inescapable, it cannot be ignored or avoided.

To address (verb) - to give attention to or deal with a matter or problem.

Phenomenon (noun) - something that exists and can be seen, felt, tasted, etc., especially something unusual or interesting.

Landfill (noun) - a place where garbage is buried.

To tip (verb ) - to get rid of rubbish by putting it in a place where it should not be.

To implement (verb) - to start using a plan or system.

Sight (noun) - something that is in someone's view.

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Questions and Answers

M: Fire away.

R: Well, this is hard because where I live, there are very few people and consequently little rubbish of any kind, let alone just plastic. I suppose the closest time would be when I was walking along the beach, and I saw some collected there. But it didn't look very good, and I wasn't very happy about it. But it seems like such an overwhelming problem to deal with. I'm not sure what to do. To go further into where and when I saw it, it was the beachfront near my home. Actually, it extends all the way in front of my hometown. It's a combination of, well, like sand and stones mostly. Although apparently lately, there's an increasing amount of plastic washing up on the shoreline. To elaborate further on the why behind that amount of rubbish being there. I'm not sure I could trace every single part to its source. But I think it collects from various places out in the ocean, and then it gets moved inwards by the currents. It's not just in my area either. I think a lot of coastal places are affected by people just tossing things into the sea, either individually or it could be being dumped en masse, I'm not too sure. To provide further detail on what I did after I happened upon it repeatedly, I did what everyone else does, nothing in the moment and then making a rather forgettable mental note to not use so much plastic. It seems like an inescapable issue that's difficult to address as everybody uses plastic for everything, don't they? To go into more detail about my thoughts, I wish there was an easy solution to this problem. But it really is, or at least it seems to be a global phenomenon. I could have gone down there and put it in a trashcan myself, but it would probably just wind up going to a landfill or even worse, getting tipped back into the sea. Hopefully, a more permanent solution that's easy to implement can be found soon though, because it wasn't a terribly pleasant sight at the time. And I imagined it still isn't.

M: And do you often see plastic waste in your neighbourhood?

R: Not where I currently live, but I definitely see it on the beach, like I just described.

M: Thank you, Rory, for your rubbish answer!

R: It wasn't rubbish, it was a good answer.

M: Yeah, yeah, it was a good answer. It was just about rubbish.

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