Listening exercise
TED: Technology, Entertainment, Design: Ideas Worth Spreading
Dianna Cohen: Tough truths about plastic pollution
http://www.ted.com/talks/dianna_cohen_tough_truths_about_plastic_pollution.html

Vocabulary:
visual artist
co-founder
Plastic Pollution Coalition
to work with
plastic bags
to cut up
to sew back together
primary material
artwork
for the last 20 years
to turn s.t. into s.t. else
two- and three-dimensional pieces
sculpture
installation
Upon Ving...
to fissure
to break down into
ephemeral
marine environment
Pacific garbage patch
gyre
initial (or: first) reaction
to go out there
to clean s.t. up
to develop a proposal
cargo ship
decommissioned
fishing trawler
crane
chipping machine
cold-molding machine
to raise awareness about an issue
to chip s.t. into little bits
to cold mold s.t. into s.t. else
bricks
potentially
to be used as
building materials
underdeveloped communities
a drop in the bucket
relative to
to generate
to back up
to look at the bigger picture
to turn off the faucet (British: the tap) 		to cut the spigot
single-use
disposable
on a global scale
to be concerned about
major oceans
supermarket
health food market
refrigerator
toxins
to leach from
initiatives
basic
debris
recycling
sustainable
"to green with"
bin
particularly
when it comes to
to downcycle
to incinerate
to ship to
to turn into
lesser things
alternatives
old-school
Pyrex
containers
Glad containers
Tupperware
to do a service to
stainless-steel bottle
glass bottle
to fill s.t. up with
filtered water
versus (vs. NOT v.s. or v.s)
you guys
to create
consumers
to cut (or: tide) the stem of s.t.:
  this should have been: to stem the tide of s.t.
to save
planet

Listening comprehension questions:
1. When Cohen first saw that plastic breaks down into little pieces over time, she thought it was great. But then she found out this was actually a dangerous property. Why?
2. Why would it not be enough to just clean up the plastic gyres in the world's oceans, as difficult as that is?
3. What are two serious problems with our efforts to recycle plastic?
4. What are "the three Rs", and what fourth "R" is Cohen proposing we adopt?
5. What is one simple thing we as individuals can do to reduce the amount of plastic being released into the environment as pollution? (This is the main point of this talk!)
6. Cohen makes one language mistake toward the end of the talk. Can you explain why she might have confused the form of this idiom?
7. What is your own behavior regarding single-use plastics and other disposable materials, used, for example, in beverage and food packaging? Do you plan to change your behavior? How? And when?

home