Rainbow recycling “彩虹色” 的垃圾回收体系

学习要点

有关 “categorisation（分类）” 的词汇

边看边答

How are the bags sorted once they arrive at the recycling plant?

文字稿

Rainbow-coloured rubbish. This is the colourful waste created by a Swedish city with a unique recycling system. Like many cities in Sweden, Eskilstuna has an impressive recycling record. It met the EU's 2020 target of recycling 50% of waste many years ago.

五颜六色的垃圾。这是一座瑞典城市用其独特的回收利用系统制造的彩色垃圾。和瑞典的许多城市一样，埃斯基尔斯蒂纳在回收利用方面取得了令人赞叹的成绩。它在多年前就达到了欧盟 2020 年前回收 50% 垃圾的目标。

But almost everyone who lives here follows a strict recycling policy at home. People are expected to sort their household waste into seven separate categories, including food, textiles, cartons and metal. But what really makes the system stand out is the bright colour code.

几乎每位居民在家里都遵循严格的回收政策，规定把生活垃圾分为七个不同的类别，包括食品、纺织物、硬纸盒及金属。但真正让这套体系脱颖而出的是明亮的颜色代码。

The reason for this becomes clear at the city's recycling plant. The bags arrive all jumbled up because they're collected altogether, once a fortnight from outside people's houses.

看看这座城市的回收厂，就明白这样做的道理了。这些垃圾袋送来时全部混在一起，因为它们是每两周从住户门外一并收来的。

But thanks to those bright colours, scanners can select the bags and separate them efficiently. The food waste in green bags is processed on site into slurry to make biogas, which powers the city's buses. One of the benefits of this method of recycling is that there is less cross-contamination, so more of the recycled waste can actually be used to make new things.

但由于垃圾袋色彩明亮，扫描器可以高效地把它们挑拣并分离开来。绿色袋子里的食物垃圾会当场被加工成泥浆，制成为驱动城市公共汽车的沼气动力。这种回收方法的一大好处是减少交叉污染，以助于把更多垃圾回收再利用。

Like the rest of Sweden, Eskilstuna is committed to sending zero waste from its citizens to landfill. Waste that cannot be recycled is incinerated at a local plant to generate electricity. This reduces reliance on fossil fuels, but does create greenhouse gases.

像瑞典其它地区一样，埃斯基尔斯蒂纳致力于将送往填埋场的市民垃圾数量降为零。不能回收的废弃物会在当地发电厂焚烧。虽然这减少了对化石燃料的依赖，却也产生了温室气体。

As countries around the world try to improve their recycling rates, some may look to Eskilstuna as an example to follow - as long as they think they can persuade their citizens to get busy sorting at home. 

世界各国都在试图提高垃圾回收率，一些国家也会效仿埃斯基尔斯蒂纳的做法，前提是要说服市民在家中勤于分类。

词汇

sort 分类、整理

colour code 以色彩划分的代码

jumbled up 混在一起

separate 分开

cross-contamination 交叉污染

问题答案

Once they arrive, scanners select the bags and separate them efficiently.