RECYCLING
By means of recycling we can convert waste into reusable materials. It differs from reuse, which simply means using a product again. In the developed countries up to about 20 percent of the nation’s solid waste is resycled.
Recycling allows both to reduce the amount of waste disposed in landfills and to save natural resources. In the eighties enviromentalislts concentrated public attention on resycling as the principal method of protecting the environment. 
However, recycling is not always economically efficient. Neither does it always help to protect the environment. On the other hand, assumptions that landfills and incinerators are necessarily “bad”, and the nation is running out of landfill space, are not well grounded. Specialists say that landfills can be safely sited and designed, and there is still plenty of space for them in every country.
What we have to do is not to put landfills in places that come into contact with water, as well as to design monitoring programs to prevent any possible harm that landfills may cause. Of all the recycled materials aluminium and paper are the most popular. About 60 percent of all aluminium beverage cans are recycled. It is accounted by the fact that recycling aluminium is less expensive that producing new aluminium, as it takes 10 percent less energy to recycle aluminium han to make it out from bauxite. 
Paper and cardboard are also extensively recycled. Producing cardboard requires a wide variety of used paper which is rather cheap to sort out. In addition ther are lots of places (such as grocery stores) where large quantities of corrugated boxes are used, which makes collection quite efficient.
On the contrary, plastics are very expensive to colect and separate which limits the possibility of their recycling. Nevertheless, around 20 percent of plastic soft drink bottles are now recycled in the USA alone.

Helpful words and notes
Convert – преобразовывать, конвертировать
Reusable – способный быть использованным вновь
Solid – твёрдый
Concentrate – концентрировать(ся)
Assumption – предположение
Incinerator – кремационная печь, мусоросжигательная печь
Well grounded - хорошо обоснованный
Site – располагать на местности, площадке
Monitoring – относящийся к мониторингу
Aluminium – алюминий
Beverage can - банка для напитков
Account – отвечать, объяснять
Bauxite - боксит
Cardboard – картон
Extensively – широко
Sort out – сортировать, отсортировывать
Grocery store – магазин товаров первой необходимости
Quantity – количество
Corrugated – гофрированный
Soft drink - безалкогольный напиток

Answer the following questions on the text.
1.	What do we get when we recycle waste?
2.	What is the difference between recycling and reuse?
3.	What is a landfill?
4.	Who concentrated public attention on recycling as the principal method of protecting the environment in the eighties?
5.	Why aren’t landfills so daneroues as the general public believes?
6.	What materials are the most popular for recycling?
7.	Why is it more economically efficient to recycle aluminium than to produce it from bauxite?
8.	Why is paper so extensively recycled?
9.	Why is it easy to find paper fit for recycling?
10.	What portion of all plastic soft drink bottles is recycled in the USA?

Источник: Миловидов, В. А. Экология и современный мир = Ecology and the Modern World / Виктор Миловидов. - Москва : Айрис-пресс, 2013. - 173, [1] с. ; 21 см. - (Английский клуб. Special topics. Upper intermediate) (Домашнее чтение). - 7000 экз.; На английском языке.