Questões de Inglês - Reading/Writing - Research
Texto - Chile’s Atacama Desert: Where Fast Fashion Goes to Die.
Deep in the Atacama Desert of Chile, new dunes are forming - not of sand, but of last year’s unsold clothing from around the world. Piled high atop the previous year’s fast fashion casualties and unpurchased lines of clothes, the garments are usually filled with toxins and dyes and do not biodegrade. The result: a fast fashion faux-pas and environmental disaster that’s been largely overlooked - until now.
Aljazeera estimated that up to 59,000 tons of clothes that can’t be sold in the U.S. or Europe end up at the Iquique port in the Alto Hospicio free zone in northern Chile each year. These are meant for resale in Latin America, but only 20,000 tons actually make their way around the continent. What doesn’t get sold in Santiago or smuggled and shipped to other countries stays in the free zone. It’s no one’s responsibility to clean up and no one will pay the necessary tariffs to take it away, Aljazeera reported.
(...)
While the human externalities of rampant consumerism - with child labor and horrible conditions in factories - are well documented, the environmental cost is less publicized and less understood. The truth, though, is that fast fashion uses an outrageous amount of water - something to the tune of 7,500 liters for one pair of jeans, a United Nations news report found. This is the equivalent amount of water that an average person drinks over seven years, the international body noted. In total, UNCTAD estimates that the fashion industry uses roughly 93 billion cubic meters of water each year, enough to quench the thirst of five million people.
"When we think of industries that are having a harmful effect on the environment, manufacturing, energy, transport and even food production might come to mind," the U.N. news report said. "But the fashion industry is widely believed to be the second most polluting industry in the world- right behind big oil.
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Factories also often dump chemicals from manufacturing into local waterways and rivers, turning them toxic and polluting communities downstream. This is particularly bad in places like Bangladesh and Indonesia, known as cheap textile manufacturing hubs. "We are committing hydrocide," said Sunita Narain, director general of Center for Science and the Environment in India, about the dirty practice. "We are deliberately murdering our rivers."
In 2017, a documentary on the pollution of waterways caused by fast fashion found that tanneries were dumping toxic chromium into the water supply in Kanpur, India. The chemical then ended up in cow’s milk and agriculture products.
All of that environmental cost doesn’t even account for end-of-life pollution created by clothes. Unsold clothes are usually burned, buried or trucked to Chile. In all these scenarios, toxins contained in the garments are released into the air and underground water channels, Aljazeera reported. As noted above, the colors, sequins and other accouterments that make the clothes the style of the minute also usually create environmental harms when chemicals leach and the garments fail to biodegrade.
All of that environmental cost doesn’t even account for end-of-life pollution created by clothes. Unsold clothes are usually burned, buried or trucked to Chile. In all these scenarios, toxins contained in the garments are released into the air and underground water channels, Aljazeera reported. As noted above, the colors, sequins and other accouterments that make the clothes the style of the minute also usually create environmental harms when chemicals leach and the garments fail to biodegrade.
(...)
Analysis shows a continued rise in consumerism. McKinsey estimated that the average consumer purchased 60% more clothes in 2014 than in 2000, Insider reported. That aligns with the doubling in clothing production between 2004 and 2019 that the Ellen McArthur Foundation found, the news report added.
"We need a model that doesn’t compromise on ethical, social and environmental values and involves customers, rather than encouraging them to binge buy ever-changing trends," Greenpeace noted as part of their Detox My Fashion campaign in Greenpeace Italy
Instead of changing our wardrobes and styles with the whims and attitudes of fast fashion, experts encourage us to slow down our desire for more. Manufacturers are also encouraged to create pieces that are meant to last and endure and to embrace truly sustainable practices. Shifts and innovations in dyeing and in fiber choice can help. As consumers and manufacturers, only by changing our mindsets instead of our outfits will we be able to effect actual change.
Until then, toxic dunes in Chile’s desert will continue to grow.
Adapted from: https://www.ecowatch.com/chile-desert-fast-fashion-2655551898.html. Accessed on 14/02/2022
De 2004 a 2019, a produção de roupas:
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Educated Americans live longer, as others die younger
catching up faliing behind
united states, average life expectance at age 25
(Anne Case and Angus Deaton. “Life expectancy in adulthood is falting for those without a BA degree, but as educational gaps have widened, racial gaps have narrowed”. PNAS« 2021. Adaptado.)
A 25-year-old American with a university degree can expect to live almost a decade longer than a contemporary who dropped out of high school. Although researchers have long known that the rich live longer than the poor, this education gap is less well documented — and is especially marked in rich countries. And whereas the average American’s expected span has been flat in recent years — and, strikingly, even fell between 2015 and 2017 — that of the one-third with a bachelor’s degree has continued to lengthen.
This disparity in life expectancy is growing, according to new research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Using data from nearly 50m death certificates filed between 1990 and 2018, Anne Case and Angus Deaton of Princeton University analysed differences in life expectancy by sex, race, ethnicity and education. They found that the lifespans of those with and without a bachelor’s degree started to diverge in the 1990s and 2000s. This gap grew even wider in the 2010s as the life expectancy of degree-holders continued to rise while that of other Americans got shorter.
What is the link between schooling and longevity? Some argue that better-educated people develop healthier lifestyles: each additional year of study reduces the chances of being a smoker and of being overweight. The better-educated earn more, which in turn is associated with greater health. Ms Case and Mr Deaton argue that changes in labour markets, including the rise of automation and increased demand for highly-educated workers, coupled with the rising costs of employer-provided health care, have depressed the supply of well-paid jobs for those without a degree. This may be contributing to higher rates of alcohol and drug use, suicide and other “deaths of despair”.
(www.economist.com,17.03.2021. Adaptado.)
According to the third paragraph, better-educated people
The Great Pyramid of Cholula, Tlachihualtepetl, or “handmade mountain” in Nahuatl (the Aztec language of Central Mexico), is located in the ancient city of Cholula, which was originally constructed as a holy city. Cholula means “place of refuge” in Nahuatl. Before the Spanish conquest in the 16th century, Cholula was one of the largest cities and principal religious centers in Mexico, with a multiethnic population of between 60,000 and 100,000. Standing 180 feet, the pyramid was almost twice the volume of the Great Pyramid of Giza, in Egypt. Successive civilizations added to what had already been built, a process which resulted in the giant pyramid-disguised-as-a-hill of today. This temple was constructed to honor Quetzalcóatl, the feathered Mesoamerican serpent god.
In 1519, Hernan Cortés arrived in Cholula with his army of conquistadors. Events leading up to the conquest are contested: at least 12 different authors wrote or painted diverse accounts of what occurred in Cholula. The result of these events, though, was undisputed: Spanish conquistadors attacked and killed thousands of Cholulans, in what became known as “the Cholula massacre”.
In 1574, long after Mexico was overpowered by the Spanish, a church was built on the top of Tlachihualtepetl. The church was named Iglesia de Nuestra Señora de los Remedios, or Our Lady of the Remedies, in English.
Cholula is now considered a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Both the church and ancient ruins beneath it are open to tourists year-round. The site attracts 220,000 visitors annually.
Internet: sacredland.org (adapted).
Concerning the text, judge the following item.
It can be concluded from the text that, although it is located in Mesoamerica, Cholula has been recognized as having great significance for the whole world’s culture and history.
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There’s something faintly embarrassing about the 50th anniversary of the first moonwalk. It was just so long ago. It’s no longer “we” who put a man on the moon, it’s “they” who put a man on the moon. So why can’t “we” do it? It’s hard not to feel that for all the technological advances of the last halfcentury, America has lost something — the ability to unite and overcome long odds to achieve greatness.
At one level, this is silly. The U.S. stopped going to the moon because Americans stopped seeing the point of it, not because they stopped being capable of it. Still, the historic Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs do have something to teach us. Months before the moon landing, the journal Science wrote that the space program’s “most valuable spin-off of all will be human rather than technological: better knowledge of how to plan, coordinate and monitor the multitudinous and varied activities of the organizations required to accomplish great social undertakings.” So, here, lessons the Apollo has left behind.
1. President John Kennedy simplified NASA’s job with his 1961 address to Congress committing to “the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth.” From then on, any decision was made by whether it would aid or impede the agency in meeting that deadline. Experiments that were too heavy were shelved, however valuable they might have been. Technologies that were superior but not ready for deployment were set aside. Having a North Star to pursue was essential, because skeptics and critics abounded. Amid protests over the Vietnam war and race riots, NASA engineers kept their heads down and their slide rules busy.
2. Harness incongruence. In any large organization there is pressure to suppress dissent. That can be deadly, as it was for NASA in the two space shuttle failures — Challenger and Columbia — each of which killed all seven crew members. Leading up to both tragedies, the fact that engineers grew concerned about a technical problem they did not fully understand, but they could not make a quantitative case; and were consequently ignored.
After the bad years of the shuttle disasters, the practice of harnessing incongruence, and learning from mistakes, has staged something of a revival at NASA, which has since successfully sent unmanned craft to Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Says Adam Stelzner, a NASA engineer, “Listen to all that the problem has to say, do not make assumptions or commit to a plan of action based on them until the deepest truth presents itself”.
3. Delegate but decide. NASA realized early on that it needed help. About 90% of Apollo’s budget was spent on contractors from the most varied places. NASA itself was, therefore, more of a confederation than a single agency.
With so many players involved, turf wars were unavoidable. NASA Administrator James Webb coined the phrase Space Age Management to describe how he tried to manage conflicts and ensure final decisions were made by headquarters. Unfortunately, Webb’s mastery of the complex network was not as thorough as he believed. The death of three astronauts during a routine test in 1967 was traced to deficiencies Webb had been unaware of. Failure, in this case, was as instructive as success.
4. Effectiveness and elegance. Aesthetically, the Apollo mission was poor. The module that touched down on the moon looked like an oversize version of a kid’s cardboard science project, all right angles and skinny legs. Apollo’s return to Earth was equally unglamorous. The spaceship that left the launch pad was awesome; what was, by plan, to be rescued from the Pacific Ocean was a stubby cone weighing just 0.2% of the majestic original. But what looks clunky and awkward to an outsider may appear elegant to an engineer. Engineering inelegance, by contrast, would be redesigning a machine without fully anticipating the consequences.
Most of the people alive today had not yet arrived on the planet when Armstrong, Aldrin and Commander Michael Collins returned to it after their historic voyage. Never mind, though. The moon landing was a victory for all of the human race, past, present, and future.
(Peter Coy. Bloomberg Businessweek, 22.07.2019. Adapted.)
The title which best summarizes the content of the text is:
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America’s social-media addiction is getting worse
Logging on: United States, social-media usage, by site
(Sources: Pew Ressarch Centre; e Marketar)
A survey in January and February 2019 from the Pew Research Centre, a think tank, found that 69% of American adults use Facebook; of these users, more than half visit the site “several times a day”. YouTube is even more popular, with 73% of adults saying they watch videos on the platform. For those aged 18 to 24, the figure is 90%. Instagram, a photo-sharing app, is used by 37% of adults. When Pew first conducted the survey in 2012, only a slim majority of Americans used Facebook. Fewer than one in ten had an Instagram account.
Americans are also spending more time than ever on social-media sites like Facebook. There is evidence that limiting such services might yield health benefits. A paper published last year by Melissa Hunt, Rachel Marx, Courtney Lipson and Jordyn Young, all of the University of Pennsylvania, found that limiting social-media usage to 10 minutes a day led to reductions in loneliness, depression, anxiety and fear. Another paper from 2014 identified a link between heavy social-media usage and depression, largely due to a “social comparison” phenomenon, whereby users compare themselves to others and come away with lower evaluations of themselves.
(www.economist.com, 08.08.2019. Adaptado.)
No trecho do primeiro parágrafo “of these users, more than half”, a expressão sublinhada refere-se
Leia o texto para responder à questão.
America’s social-media addiction is getting worse
Logging on: United States, social-media usage, by site
(Sources: Pew Ressarch Centre; e Marketar)
A survey in January and February 2019 from the Pew Research Centre, a think tank, found that 69% of American adults use Facebook; of these users, more than half visit the site “several times a day”. YouTube is even more popular, with 73% of adults saying they watch videos on the platform. For those aged 18 to 24, the figure is 90%. Instagram, a photo-sharing app, is used by 37% of adults. When Pew first conducted the survey in 2012, only a slim majority of Americans used Facebook. Fewer than one in ten had an Instagram account.
Americans are also spending more time than ever on social-media sites like Facebook. There is evidence that limiting such services might yield health benefits. A paper published last year by Melissa Hunt, Rachel Marx, Courtney Lipson and Jordyn Young, all of the University of Pennsylvania, found that limiting social-media usage to 10 minutes a day led to reductions in loneliness, depression, anxiety and fear. Another paper from 2014 identified a link between heavy social-media usage and depression, largely due to a “social comparison” phenomenon, whereby users compare themselves to others and come away with lower evaluations of themselves.
(www.economist.com, 08.08.2019. Adaptado.)
According to the first paragraph and the graphic images, nowadays the most popular social-media platform among American adults is
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