A)Reduce, reuse, and recycle. Recycling has become a part of American life. It also is an important part of the waste-processing industry. In fact, many cities and towns in the United States now have recycling programs. To learn how such a program works, we will go to a recycling centre in the eastern state of Maryland.B)The recycle bin in the home or office is often the last stop for empty containers. But for papers, plastics, cardboards and cans, it is the beginning of a trip thousands of kilometres long. Yehenew Gedshew directs a recycling centre near Washington, DC. "As long as people throw their trash, we have a job." His recycling centre processes about 35 tons of material an hour. How does it process that much every hour Yehenew Gedshew says the business is highly-organized. "First what happens is, dump trucks bring materials to our site. They dump it on the tipping floor. It goes to the first screen where the cardboard and the rest of the material is sorted out." The rest of the material goes on a belt that carries the glass and plastic to the last screening area(筛分区). The glass gets crushed and the plastic gets sorted and flattened.C)Local recycling programs often require people to separate plastics, papers and glass. But Yehenew Gedshew says sorters at his recycling centre do all that work. He says the centre ships most of its plastic to a processing centre in North Carolina, more than 500 kilometres to the south. At that centre, mountains of bottles become piles of plastic. They are ready to be melted and shaped into something new.D)From the store to the recycling bin, and from there to just about anywhere you can imagine, plastic bottles spend a lot of time on the road. And so have we. We now go to Fayetteville, North Carolina. The city is home to the Clear Path Recycling centre. It is one of the largest plastic recycling centres in the United States.E)The Clear Path Recycling Centre receives 8 to 10 trucks a day. That means more than 18,000 kilograms of plastic every day. The goods come to the centre in large piles or bales, like the ones at the recycling centre in Maryland.F)Not far from the Clear Path Recycling is a huge storage area for the plastic objects. They enter the recycling centre to begin the process that will change them. "This is where the whole bottles enter the whole bottle wash. It’ s just like your front-end loading washing machine at your house. It’ s just a lot longer, and a lot bigger."G)Hot water washes paper labels off the drink bottles and removes dirt. The plastic is broken up into what the plastics recycling industry calls "PET flake(PET碎片)." Another centre will buy the flake to melt and mould into something else.H)Plastic bottles spend their lives on the move. Machines mould and fill them with our favourite drinks. When we are done drinking, machines destroy the bottles and make them into new bottles. Their journey never ends. But our trip has come to an end in Wilson, North Carolina.I)In our program, we have described the trip made by plastic bottles from stores to recycling bins and then to recycling centres. The bottles are then broken down into small pieces, which are put into bags. Now, we will witness the rebirth of a plastic bottle.J)Mark Rath is a supervisor at Peninsula Packaging. At his business, pieces of plastic become products like carry-out trays at food stores and restaurants. Peninsula Packaging melts and flattens plastic so it can be shaped and moulded. The process is complex. "We take the clear chips like this, and it goes into an oven, and it cooks for about 3 to 4 hours in that oven."K)The plastic cooks at almost 200℃. When the melted plastic comes out of the oven, it is made into carry-out trays or other food packaging. "We unwind the plastic into a very long oven where we heat it again, and then we’ 11 form it in a forming station. We’ 11 follow it through and see what happens to it." What happens to the recycled plastic involves a vacuum, lots of pressure, and— believe it or not—more recycling.L)Mark Rath says all of the plastics in this packaging centre become some kind of container in their next lives. "That’ 11 end up being a fresh-cut-salad base. Not sure where it goes, but it’ 11 end up some place with celery and carrots and tomatoes." It has taken several days, but a plastic bottle like the one we bought in Washington, DC has now become a salad tray in North Carolina.M)Countless things affect the health of our environment. What we take from nature may not harm it as much as what we add to it. For years, many people have harmed the environment by throwing away plastic grocery bags. But in Washington, a "bag tax" has changed the behaviour of many people, and the way business affects the environment.N)The Anacostia River flows through southeast Washington into the better-known Potomac River. The Anacostia is often called the city’s "other river." Tommy Wells is a member of the Washington, DC city council. He is worried about the health of river. He notes that some people have called the Anacostia, one of the 10 most polluted rivers in the country. Mr. Wells says he was tired of seeing so many plastic bags in or near the river. "I wanted something that got into people’s heads: not their pockets."O)Stores in Washington now require people to pay five cents for each disposable plastic bag. The money goes into the "Anacostia River Clean Up Fund." People who bring their own bag do not pay anything extra. Has the "bag tax" helped Bret Bolin is with the Anacostia Watershed Society, a group that is working to protect the river. "In just about 3 and a half months of the bag fee, people were already reporting that they were seeing a lot less bags in the river and at cleanup sites than in past years." Councilman Tommy Wells agrees that the bag tax worked. "There was a 60 percent reduction of the amount of bags that were pulled out of the river." The local government estimates that stores gave shoppers almost 300 million bags in 2009. Mr. Bolin says the bag tax caused the number to drop sharply. "And they were estimating something like 55 million being distributed in 2010, which is an 80 percent reduction, which is amazing."In a huge storage area the bottles will enter an enormous machine which looks like a big front-end loading washing machine in people’ s home.