The whole rotten business of rubbish - Module 2

C2 Proficiency · Multiple Choice Reading · Expert Proficiency Resource Book, Pearson Education

You are going to read an article about recycling household rubbish. For questions 1–6, choose the answer (A, B, C or D) which you think fits best according to the text.

Visitors to New York are often shocked when they first encounter its powerful summertime stink of rotting garbage. Breathing in the miasmic odours and observing the mountainous piles of refuse that line the streets each night, newcomers are apt to reach the conclusion that New York is rather relaxed and devil-may-care about matters of refuse and refuse collection. But nothing could be further from the truth. The city may look and smell like a compost heap a lot of the time, but it is home to some of the most draconian garbage rules and regulations known to modern man. Every neighbourhood in New York has three designated garbage pick-up days a week and residents are allowed to put their refuse out no earlier than 5pm, on the eve of each pick-up day. If you live in a smaller apartment building with no garbage storage in the basement, your pick-up days take on quite disproportionate significance. Miss a day, and you have to live with your festering garbage bags in your apartment until the next scheduled pick-up. Once or twice, over the years, I have become so desperate to get rid of some rancid pieces of chicken, or left-over Indian take-away, that I have crept out under cover of night and illicitly dumped the bags in another neighbourhood where pick-up was due the next morning. Then there are the elaborate and fiercely policed recycling protocols. Plastic and glass and metal go in a blue bag, paper and cardboard in a transparent bag, and everything else in a black bag. Black bags can go out on any of the three days, but the recyclables can only be put out on Friday. Failure to observe these – and a whole raft of infinitely more subtle particulars – results in heavy fines. When I first moved to the city, and had not yet been initiated into the mysteries of the garbage laws, I was constantly being busted for improperly wrapped or sorted refuse. And as if that weren't sufficiently galling in itself, the fines were then issued to my building superintendent, who would then post them on my front door, like a plague sign, for all my neighbours to see. Once or twice a month, I would return home to find a gnomic account of my latest infraction – 'Two bottles found in black bag' or 'Newspapers improperly tied' – together with a demand for a hundred bucks. One day, in a bolshy mood, I asked the superintendent how the garbage police could be so sure that the delinquent bottles and inadequately tied newspapers were mine and not someone else's. He trudged down to the basement and came back brandishing an empty bottle of prescription drugs with my name on it. 'They found this in the bag,' he said. Knowing that one's garbage stands a strong chance of being gone through, piece by piece, by a police enforcement agent does tend to encourage compliance. It also produces a certain amount of paranoia. Over the past 17 years, I have spent more time than I am happy to admit standing over my recycling bins, cutting up receipts and scribbling over labels to obscure evidence of my drugger self-medication habits and lingerie purchases. I deeply resent all this. It's not just that the economics of the city's recycling are highly questionable – which they are – or even that an estimated 40 percent of New York's recyclable stuff winds up in landfills, anyway – which it does. There's something maddening about the elevated status that recycling enjoys – as if it were an absolute good. To question its worthiness is to put yourself beyond the pale of common civic values. One recent Friday night, as my children and I were hauling garbage bags down to the street, we met a neighbour in the elevator. Observing my untidy bag of unflattened cardboard boxes, he offered to give me some packing tips. 'We do all our sorting and packing as a family on Thursday nights. It's kind of fun and the kids love it.' I smiled and nodded. 'Mom thinks recycling is crap,' my daughter piped up. 'She wishes we could go back to landfills.' The neighbour's eyes grew misty with anguish, or perhaps suppressed rage. 'Well,' he sighed, 'I'm sorry she feels that way,' he murmured. He has cut me dead ever since.

it takes refuse collection more seriously than other cities.

its refuse collection policies aren't implemented rigorously.

its citizens fail to comply with its refuse collection regulations.

it smells of rubbish despite having a highly effective refuse collection system.

The writer says that visitors to New York often gain the erroneous impression that

the shortcomings of the arrangements at her own accommodation.

the impact that rubbish collections have on the rest of her life.

the need to develop strategies to get round the system.

the inconvenience of the timing of rubbish collections.

In the second paragraph, the writer is emphasising

the amount which was levied

the way she was informed of them

the triviality of some of the offences

the reaction of her neighbours to them

What did the writer find particularly irritating about the fines she received?

realised she had no choice but to comply in future.

resolved to avoid putting certain items into her rubbish.

became worried about what else her garbage revealed.

decided to pay more attention to the detailed instructions.

On hearing about how her infringements of the rules had been uncovered, the writer

the attitude of her fellow citizens towards recycling.

the public money that is wasted on recycling projects.

the attempts of her neighbours to advise her about recycling.

the fact that recycling schemes do not always achieve their aims.

In the final paragraph, the writer admits to being most resentful of

politely tentative.

righteously indignant.

light-hearted and ironic.

restrained and reasonable.

In the text as a whole, the writer's tone is

The whole rotten business of rubbish

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