四川岳池县罗度中学2016高考英语二轮复习 阅读理解选练2.docVIP

2016岳池县罗度中学高考英语二轮阅读理解选练（2） 阅读下列四篇短文，从每小题后所给的A,B,C或D四个选项中，选出最佳选项。 Ask someone what they have done to help the environment recently and they will almost certainly mention recycling. Recycling in the home is very important of course. However, being forced to recycle often means we already have more material than we need. We are dealing with the results of that over-consumption in the greenest way possible, but it would be far better if we did not need to bring so much material home in the first place. The total amount of packaging increased by 12% between 1999 and 2005. It now makes up a third of a typical household’s waste in the UK. In many supermarkets nowadays food items are packaged twice with plastic and cardboard. Too much packaging is doing serious damage to the environment. The UK, for example, is running out of areas for burying this unnecessary waste. If such packaging is burnt, it gives off greenhouse gases which go on to cause the greenhouse effect. Recycling helps, but the process itself uses energy. The solution is not to produce such items in the first place. Food waste is a serious problem, too. Too many supermarkets encourage customers to buy more than they need. However, a few of them are coming round to the idea that this cannot continue, encouraging customers to reuse their plastic bags, for example. But this is not just about supermarkets. It is about all of us. We have learned to associate packaging with quality. We have learned to think that something unpackaged is of poor quality. This is especially true of food. But it also applies to a wide range of consumer products, which often have far more packaging than necessary. There are signs of hope. As more of us recycle, we are beginning to realise just how much unnecessary material we are collecting. We need to face the wastefulness of our consumer culture, but we have a mountain to climb. 1. What does the underlined phrase “that over-consumption” refer to? A. Using too much packaging.