The things we throw away 🗑️♻️🙀 Real Easy English — Transcript

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1. 0:00Hello and welcome to Real Easy English.
2. 0:03In this podcast, we have real conversations in easy English
3. 0:07to help you learn.
4. 0:08I'm Neil.
5. 0:09And I'm Beth.
6. 0:10Did you know you can watch a video of this podcast on our website?
7. 0:14Go to bbclearningenglish.com.
8. 0:23Hi Beth, how are you today?
9. 0:25I'm very good, thank you, Neil. How are you?
10. 0:27I'm very good. What are we talking about?
11. 0:30Well, today we are talking about waste.
12. 0:33So, that's what we call things that we don't want anymore,
13. 0:36like rubbish or things that we've used, and we now don't need them.
14. 0:42So, for example, after I've eaten some crisps as a snack,
15. 0:47the... the packet is rubbish – it's waste.
16. 0:51Are you good at dealing with waste?
17. 0:54I think so. I mean, at home we recycle.
18. 0:59We can recycle glass, plastic, metal, card.
19. 1:05All the usual things that we recycle here in the UK. What about you?
20. 1:10Yeah, I do what I'm supposed to do.
21. 1:12So, we have a separate bin for different things –
22. 1:16for plastic and for glass and for paper and for food.
23. 1:20Yeah.
24. 1:21When I was a kid, everything went in the same bin.
25. 1:23Really?
26. 1:24Yeah.
27. 1:25And now that seems really crazy and really bad.
28. 1:30Yeah.
29. 1:31So, I think we are better now at dealing with waste,
30. 1:36but probably there's more things we could do.
31. 1:39Yeah, I would think so. Yeah.
32. 1:41Something that I do as well in... is when I'm in a supermarket,
33. 1:45I try to not buy fruit and veg that's wrapped in plastic.
34. 1:50I'll always try and buy the individual products like apples on their own,
35. 1:56or, you know, a courgette.
36. 1:57You don't need a courgette that's wrapped in plastic.
37. 2:00Well, that's a good idea,
38. 2:01but sometimes it's actually quite difficult to find things
39. 2:05that aren't covered in plastic because we rely on plastic so much.
40. 2:10Yeah, I know that is true.
41. 2:12You know what people do these days,
42. 2:15which is great, that they didn't used to do? Carry reusable water bottles.
43. 2:21That's true.
44. 2:22Almost everybody carries a bottle.
45. 2:24And just a few years ago, people bought plastic bottles
46. 2:27of water all the time.
47. 2:30Yeah, I remember when I was teaching in a classroom
48. 2:34and I'd sometimes have students.
49. 2:36They would come to London from all over the world,
50. 2:39and every day they would go to a supermarket and buy a plastic bottle.
51. 2:44And I used to... I used to say sometimes, you know, 'Why? Buy a reusable one.'
52. 2:48And then you're not using this plastic all the time.
53. 2:51Yeah. We have a word for that, don't we?
54. 2:54Single-use plastic.
55. 2:56Yeah. So we have to try and avoid single-use plastics.
56. 3:00What about water?
57. 3:01So water waste.
58. 3:03I really like having a bath just to relax,
59. 3:06but sometimes I feel really guilty about it because it's using up
60. 3:10quite a lot of water.
61. 3:11Yeah, I prefer showers, which is good because they use less water.
62. 3:16So, Beth, is there anything that you are planning to do to cut down further
63. 3:22on the waste that you create?
64. 3:24I should probably have fewer baths.
65. 3:27I mean, I maybe have one a week, so... I mean, I shower too, of course.
66. 3:35But maybe I could have a bath less often.
67. 3:40Find other ways of relaxing which are less wasteful.
68. 3:43What about you? Anything you want to cut back on?
69. 3:47Yeah, I think, we talked about single-use plastic.
70. 3:52You know, clingfilm,
71. 3:55the very thin, like, sheet...
72. 3:57sheets of plastic that you wrap food in.
73. 4:01Yeah.
74. 4:02I always feel bad when I use that stuff, but it's also really convenient
75. 4:06and does its job well keeping a sandwich together or whatever.
76. 4:12But I don't like it, so I want to cut down on my use of clingfilm.
77. 4:24Let's recap the vocabulary we heard in this conversation.
78. 4:28We had 'waste'. 'Waste' is things that are unwanted like rubbish,
79. 4:32and we can also describe something as 'a waste'
80. 4:35when someone uses something they don't need to,
81. 4:38or they throw something away after not using it.
82. 4:41So, for example, when my kids don't finish their dinner, that's a waste.
83. 4:47We had 'single-use plastics'.
84. 4:49These are plastic materials that we use once and then throw away.
85. 4:54So, for example, food wrappers and shopping bags.
86. 4:58We heard 'recycle', which means to collect rubbish
87. 5:01in order to make materials that can be used again.
88. 5:04We can also describe something as 'recyclable'.
89. 5:08It means it can be recycled.
90. 5:10It can be used again.
91. 5:11And we heard some common phrasal verbs that we use when talking
92. 5:15about the environment.
93. 5:17So, we had 'to rely on', which means need something in order to function.
94. 5:22For example, we rely on plastic a lot in our daily lives.
95. 5:26We can also say 'cut down on', which means to reduce something.
96. 5:31And we also hear 'cut back on'.
97. 5:33So, for example, I want to cut back on single-use plastic.
98. 5:37That's it for this episode of Real Easy English.
99. 5:40If you want to learn more phrasal verbs about the environment,
100. 5:44then Georgie has made a whole video on this.
101. 5:47You'll find the link in the notes below.
102. 5:50See you then.
103. 5:51Bye!