1. Teenagers ignore litter bins "to stay cool"
2. More litter bins in the streets!
3. Teenagers against litter
Teenagers have admitted they drop litter because they don't think it's cool to use a bin. A survey by the Tidy Britain Group found that boys say that putting rubbish in a bin would make them appear "soft" or "uncool". Youngsters aged 13-16 were asked what they thought litter was, how big a problem it was in their area, who they thought dropped litter and why they did it?
|Most teenagers believe rubbish is mainly made up of sweet and crisp wrappers and that richer areas are less likely to be littered than poorer ones. They also recognise that rubbish is a common thing in and around schools. When it comes to dropping litter, the kids questioned admitted their age group were the biggest culprits, with boys more to blame than girls. One 14-year-old said he dropped litter "365 days a year 'cos I'm always eating".
A lack of waste bins was mentioned as an excuse for dropping rubbish, but the main reason given is laziness and peer pressure.
Exercise 11. Read the text again and answer the questions.
According to the survey:
1. What age group is mainly responsible for dropping litter?
2. What places are most littered?
3. What are the four reasons for teenagers to drop litter?
Exercise 12. Discuss the following questions in pairs and share your opinion with the class.
1. Do you agree that the reasons mentioned are serious enough to make the teenagers behave like this?
2. Do you think that teenagers are mainly responsible for dropping litter in your home area?
Language work
Exercise 13. Read the examples and choose the right answer to the question from the options in the box.
Why do you think there is no article with the underlined nouns?
1. Teenagers have admitted they drop litter...
2. The survey found that boys say that putting rubbish in a bin would make them appear "soft" or "uncool".
3. Water and air pollution affects people's health.
 |
Exercise 14. Read the definitions.
litter - waste such as empty packets, bottles and pieces of paper that people have dropped in the street or in a public place
waste used, damaged or unwanted matter (materials or substances esp. after it has been used for an industrial process
garbage esp. AmE, rubbish esp. BrE waste material e. g. from a house or office to be thrown
Exercise 15. Study the grid of possible word combinations and solve the riddles.
| bin | pipe | Can | |
| waste | + | + | |
| litter | + | ||
| rubbish | + | ||
| garbage | + | ||
| dust | + |
1. It is connected to a sink to get rid of dirty water after washing up.
2. They are big and placed outside houses in the backyard. People throw their garbage
into them.
3. We have it in our kitchen to throw away everything that is not needed any more.
4. We can find them on the streets to throw away wrappers, plastic bags etc.
