Lecture about a Project on Household Waste Recycling - IELTS Listening Sample Answer

IELTS Listening section examines a candidate’s ability to carefully listen to audio and answer questions. This topic - A lecture about a project on household waste recycling is IELTS listening section two. Candidates need to answer the following IELTS listening question types:

• Fill in the blanks
• Table completion

Check:  Take IELTS Coaching Sign up for the Free Trial

Audio Transcript:

You will hear a student giving a presentation about a project on household waste recycling. First, you have some time to look at questions 31 to 40.

Now listen carefully and answer questions 31 to 40.

Well, my group has been doing a project on how household waste is recycled in Britain. We were quite shocked to discover that only nine percent of people here in the UK make an effort to recycle their household waste. This is a lower figure that in most other European countries and needs to increase dramatically in the next few years, if the government is going to meet its recycling targets. The agreed targets for the UK mean that by 2008 we must reduce our carbon dioxide emissions by 12.5 percent compared with 1990 and recycling can help to achieve that goal in two main ways.

The production of recycled glass and paper uses much less energy than producing them from virgin materials and also recycling reduces greenhouse gas emissions from landfill sites and incineration plants. As part of our project, we carried out a survey of people in the street and the thing that came up over and over again is that people don't think it's easy enough to recycle their waste. One problem is that there aren't enough drop off sites. That is, the places where the public is supposed to take their waste. We also discovered that waste that's collected from householders is taken to places called drain banks for sorting and baling and to loads. One problem here is taking out everything that shouldn't have been placed in the recycling containers. People put all sorts of things into bottle banks like plastic bags and even broken umbrellas. All this has to be removed by hand.

Another difficulty is the toughened glass used for cooking doesn't fully melt at the temperature required for other glass. And so that also has to be picked out by hand. Glass is easy to recycle because it can be reused over and over again without becoming weaker. Two million tons of glass is thrown away each year. That is 7 billion bottles and jars. But only 500,000 tons of that is collected and recycled. Oddly enough half the glass that's collected is green and a lot of that is imported. So more green glasses recycled in the UK needs as a result, new uses are being developed for recycled glass, particularly green glass. For example, in fiber glass manufacture and water filtration. A company called CIF Aggregates makes a product for roads and 30% of the material is crushed glass. The recycling paper. Britain came second in Europe with 40 percent behind Germany's amazing 70%. When recycling started there were quality problems. So it was difficult to use recycled paper in office printers, but these problems have now been solved and Martins based in South London produces a range of office stationery, which is 100% recycled. Costs the same as normal paper and is of equally high quality, but this high quality comes at a cost in terms of the waste produced during the process.

Over a third of the waste paper that comes in can't be used in the recycled paper, leaving the question of what to do with it. One firm Paper Save currently sells this to farmers as a soil conditioner. Though this practice will soon be banned because of transport costs and the smell and the company is looking into the possibility of alternative uses. Plastic causes problems because there are so many different types of plastic in use today and each one has to be dealt with differently. Pack Right recycles all sorts of things from bottles to car bumpers and one of its most successful activities is recycling plastic bottles to make containers, which are used all over the country to collect waste. “The save a cup scheme” was set up by the vending and plastics industries to recycle as many as possible of the three and a half billion polystyrene cups used each year. At the moment, 500 million poly cups are collected, processed and sold on to other businesses such as Waterford, which turns the cups into pencils and Johnson and Jones, a Welch based firm, which has developed a wide variety of items including business cards.

Well, to sum up, there seems to be plenty of research going on into how to reuse materials but the biggest problem is getting people to think about recycling instead of throwing things away. At least doing the research made us much more careful.

Section 4

Questions 31-40

17. 31-35

Write NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS OR A NUMBER for each answer.
HOUSEHOLD WASTE RECYCLING

31. By 2008, carbon dioxide emissions need to be _______ lower than in 1990.

Answer: 12.5%

Explanation: According to the lecture, by the year 2008, carbon dioxide emissions need to be 12.5% lower than in 1990.

Also check:

32. Recycling saves energy and reduces emissions from landfill sites and _______

Answer: incineration plants

Explanation: Recycling saves energy and reduces emissions from landfill sites and incineration plants.

33. People say that one problem is a lack of _______ sites for household waste.

Answer: drop-off

Explanation: One of the major problems as said by people is the lack of drop-off sites for household waste.

34. Glass designed to be utilised for _______ cannot be recycled with other types of glass.

Answer: cooking

Explanation: The glass sets designed for cooking purposes cannot be recycled with other types of glass.

35. In the UK, _______ tons of glass is recycled each year.

Answer: 5, 00, 000

Explanation: In the UK, 5, 00, 000 tons of glasses are recycled each year.

Q.36-40

Question 36:

Answer: roads

Explanation: CIF Aggregates make glasses used for making roads and 30% of the product used is crushed glass.

Question 37:

Answer: soil conditioner

Explanation: The firm Paper Save sells over a third of the paper waste that can be recycled to the farmers as soil conditioners.

Question 38:

Answer: containers

Explanation: One of the most successful activities of the company named Pack Right is converting plastic bottles into containers.

Question 39:

Answer: pencils

Explanation: The company named, Waterford, turns the 500 million poly cups into pencils.

Question 40:

Answer: business cards

Explanation: Johnson and Jones is a famous firm that has made business cards as well.