can we make garbage disappear?
i. whoever said "waste not, want not" hasn't had much influence on 276 million americans. in 1997 they threw out more than 195 billion kg of garbage. that means each man, woman and child tossed out an average of 725 kgs. of trash.
2. and that's just the benign solid waste. each year american industries dump more than 1.1 billion kg of toxic wastes--like lead compounds, chromium, ammonia and organic solvents--into the air, water and ground.
3. the really bad news is that most of the planet's 6 billion people are beginning to follow in the footsteps of the us and the rest of the developed world. "either we need to control ourselves or nature will," says george liss of loomis, california, a veteran of recycling and solid-waste programs. as he sees it, garbage needs to become a thing of the past.
4. that may seem impossible, but it's not unprecedented. in nature, liss points out, there is no such thing as waste. what dies or is discarded by one part of the ecosystem nourishes another part. liss says humanity can emulate nature's garbage-free ways, but it will require innovative technology and a big change in attitude.
5. in kalundborg, denmark exists an "eeo-industrial park". it shows how much can be gained by recycling and resource sharing. within the park, a power company, pharmaceuticals firm, wallboard producer and refinery share in the production and use of steam, gas and cooling water. excess heat warms nearby homes and agricultural greenhouses. one company's waste becomes another's resource. the power plant sells the sulfur dioxide from its smokestacks to the wallboard company, which uses the compound as a raw material. dozens of these environmentally sound industrial parks are being developed all over the world.
6. biotechnology is giving us additional tools to cope with waste--and turn it to our advantage. microbes can take toxic substances in contaminated soil and convert them into harmless byproducts. scientists at monsanto and heartland fiber are working toward engineering corn plants with the kind of fiber content that paper companies would find attractive. so long as the genetic tinkering poses no ecological threat, that approach could tap into a huge stream of agricultural waste, turning some of it into industrial ingredients.
7. in consumer markets, recycling has already spawned an array of alchemists. jackets are being made from discarded plastic bottles, briefcases from worn-out tires and belts from beer-bottle caps. even though the us has barely begun to get serious about recycling, about 25% of its 195 billion kg of municipal garbage are now salvaged for some sort of second life.
8. jesse ausubel, director of the program for the human environment at rockefeller university in new york city predicts that architects will increasingly rely on new types of strong and lightweight, foamed glass. ausubel thinks we could see foamed glass replace much of the concrete in today's buildings.
9. there are limits to how many lives you can give to a pile of debris. in the long run, we have to reduce the amount of material we use in the first place. some progress is being made--aluminum cans and plastic soda bottles have become thinner over the years, but more reductions will require a whole new kind of manufacturing process.
10. that is where nanotechnology plays a role. in this eme. rging field researchers expect to create products by building them atom by atom, molecule by molecule. this bottom-up nanotechnological way of making things differs from the traditional fabrication methods that create so much waste along the way.
11. researchers have made headway toward molecule-size transistors and wires. these laboratory feats make talk of sugar cube-size computers less speculative than it was a few years ago.
12. but technology is not enough. just as critical are changes in attitudes and lifestyles. brad allenby, at&t's vice president for environment, safety, and health, believes our move from the industrial age could help enormously. at present, he says, 29% of at&t's management force telecommutes, meaning less reliance on cars. this, allenby speculates, could be part of something bigger--a shift in our view of what enhances our quality of life. maybe we'll put less value on things that use lots of materials and more on things that don't swallow up resources--like telecommuting and the internet. maybe downloading music from the web will reduce the demand for cd cases. we still have an opportunity to use computers to cut consumption of paper and the trees it comes from.
13. as society becomes more information-rich, the easier it will be to find uses for discarded materials. one person's garbage is another's treasure. when that attitude goes global, the human beings of the new millennium may be able to look back on their former garbage-producing ways as a forgivable error of their youth as a species.
参考译文：我们能消除垃圾吗?
1．无论是谁提出“不浪费，不愁缺”的忠告，都不曾在2．76亿美国人中 引起大的共鸣。他们在1997年扔掉了1,950多亿吨垃圾。也就是说，平均 每个男人、女人和孩子扔掉725公斤的垃圾。
2．这些只不过是无害的固体垃圾。美国的工业部门每年向空中、水里和 地上排放11亿吨以上的有毒废料——其中有铅化合物、铬、氨和有机溶剂。
3．尤其糟糕的是，地球上60亿人口中的大多数开始步美国和其它发达 国家的后尘。加利福尼亚州卢米斯市的乔治·利斯说：“我们要么控制自己的 行为，要么听任自然界的摆布。”他参与资源重复利用与固体垃圾的项目已有 多年。在他看来，垃圾应该成为过去的事情。
4．这种想法似乎不太实际，但并不是没有先例。利斯指出， 自然界没有 所谓的垃圾。生态系统某一部分死去的或被丢弃的东西可以为另一部分提供 养分。利斯说人类可以效仿自然界消除垃圾的方法，但这需要创新的科技和 态度的重大转变。
5．丹麦的凯隆堡市有一个“生态工业区”。资源共享与重复利用的好处在 这里一览无遗。工业区里有发电厂、制药厂、墙板制造厂和提炼厂，它们共 同生产和使用蒸汽、天然气和冷却水。多余的热能用来给附近的住户和温室 农作物供暖。一家工厂排放的废料成为另一家工厂的能源。发电厂把从烟囱 排放出来的二氧化硫卖给墙板制造厂，该厂使用这种化合物作为原材料。有 几十个这种有益于环境保护的工业区正在世界各地建立起来。
6．生物技术为我们提供了更多的处理垃圾的方法——而且能够变废为 宝，为我所用。微生物能从被污染的土壤中吸收有毒的物质，把它们转化成 无害的副产品。孟山都公司和哈德兰纤维公司的科学家正致力于培育一种富 含特殊纤维质的玉米植株，造纸厂会对这种纤维质很感兴趣。只要这样的基 因调整不会影响生态平衡，大量的农业废料便可以得到开发利用，有些可以 用作工业原料。
7．在消费品市场上，资源的重复利用已经导致出现许多“炼金术士”。废 弃的塑料瓶变成了茄克衫，磨损的轮胎变成了公文包，啤酒瓶盖变成了皮带。 尽管美国几乎不把资源的重复利用当回事，它所产生的1．95亿吨城市垃圾已 有大约25％被回收再利用。
8．纽约洛克菲勒大学人类生存环境项目的负责人杰西·奥萨贝预测，建 筑师将越来越多地使用质地牢固轻巧的新型泡沫玻璃。奥萨贝认为，我们将 会看到建筑物里许多混凝土结构被泡沫玻璃所取代。
9．瓦砾堆被回收利用的次数总是有限的。从长远来看，我们首先必须降 低原材料的消耗量。这方面已经有了一些进展——几年来，铝制罐和塑料汽 水瓶变得越来越薄了，但要进一步减轻重量，就必须使用全新的制造过程。
10．这就轮到纳米技术发挥作用了。这个新兴领域的研究者们打算一个原 子接一个原子、一个分子接一个分子地制造产品。这种由下及上制造产品的 纳米技术不同于浪费惊人的传统制造工艺。
11．研究者们已经在研制分子大小的晶体管和线路方面取得了突破。多亏 了这些在实验室里取得的成果，如今人们谈起方糖大小的电脑这个话题来， 不会再像前几年那样完全局限于纯理论的层面。
12．但是光有技术是不够的。人们的态度和生活方式的改变同样很重要。 美国电话与电报公司主管环境、安全和健康的副总裁布雷·艾伦比认为，我 们逐渐告别工业时代对此会有极大的促进作用。他说，美国电话与电报公司 目前有29％的管理人员坐在家里办公，这就意味着对汽车的依赖性有所减 轻。艾伦比推测这也许是某种重大变革的一部分——即是说人们对如何提高 生活质量的观念发生变化。我们可能会减少对消耗大量原材料的产品的重视， 而更看重不会鲸吞资源的事物——比如说远程办公和互联网。从网上下载音 乐也许可以降低激光唱片盒的市场需求量。我们还有机会借助电脑降低纸张 及其原料木材的消耗量。
13．社会的信息化程度越高，我们就越容易发掘废料的用途。一个人的垃 圾是另一个人的财富。当世界各地的人们都持这种态度的时候，处于新千年 的人类回想起当年制造垃圾的种种方式，可能会认为那只不过是人这个物种 进化到青年时期犯下的可饶恕的错误。