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2020年商务英语考试高级阅读材料一

Top-3 Strategies to Create a Zero Waste Business

Kerri Hollingsworth

Modern-day waste is currently being treated with an “out of sight, out of mind” attitude. If we can’t see our waste, it doesn’t exist. But this mindset is directly making businesses complacent, and more importantly financially irresponsible when believing that for reduction of waste means a rise in costs and expenditure.

The way we conduct business through production, transportation, consumption and the discarding of materials, all attribute to the landfill issues that are rapidly becoming a real problem for our government and citizens alike.

But, what if there was a way to create a successful business without the waste? Being mindful of your waste in the workplace isn’t something that is being brushed off like it might have been ten years ago, with more and more employees and managers implementing huge strategies to ensure their businesses are operating in an eco-conscious manner for the betterment of our environment.

According to the Zero Waste Alliance, “Zero Waste is a goal that is ethical, economical, efficient and visionary, to guide people in changing their lifestyles and practices to emulate sustainable natural cycles, where all discarded materials are designed to become resources for others to use.”

“Zero Waste means designing and managing products and processes to systematically avoid and eliminate the volume and toxicity of waste and materials, conserve and recover all resources, and not burn or bury them. Implementing Zero Waste will eliminate all discharges to land, water or air that are a threat to planetary, human, animal or plant health.”

Going beyond a recycling bin by our desks and metal straws in the staff kitchen, here are the top three high-level strategy tips to implement into your business for a zero-waste approach in 2019.

Conduct an audit on your current waste streams

It’s easy to introduce a new piece of tech or office rule to cut down on your waste, but without treating your current waste streams like a business system that needs improvement, these efforts will only act as a band-aid on a much larger issue, which is temporary. Take a step back and fully analyse all aspects of where waste is being produced and how it’s being discarded. Are there ways in which you can stop the creation of the waste or re-route to waste in your business to be reused someplace else? A great example of this is identifying areas in which you might be over providing resources. Instead of delivering corporate reports and document to every staff member on paper, digitalise it and offer physical copies as a back-up to those who might want them.

Designate a role to zero-waste

When you’re serious about waste management, it’s going to be a no-brainer to delegate this work to an existing or new staff member. Having someone (or even a committee!) who always have zero waste on their minds is going to fill in any blanks that might have been missed during your audit and ensure that the new systems being introduced are executed and adopted by staff properly. Knowing that the goal for zero-waste not only comes with the extra added benefits of saving dollars in the long run, it’s also a great initiative for your company’s image and could even be a great PR angle to show that your business is leading the way in real zero-waste implementation.

Set your waste reduction goals

Once you’ve started working with the intention to build a zero-waste business, understand that this might take some time to effectively be implemented (especially in large and established companies). With your waste management employee or team, set realistic goals in-house for you to aim for to one day when the company becomes completely zero-waste! It could be that you want to reach zero-waste by 2025 but have yearly KPIs in place that will build towards that larger, long-term goal. Remember, waste management can be orchestrated on many different levels in the company, and to completely change your current level of waste is not going to happen in one go. Set attainable short, medium and long-term goals, and work towards them!

Leading a business that is conscious about their environmental impact and how they manage their waste internally is something that might take time but will construct a foundation for positive growth, and even promote productivity in work output and a reduction in financial expenditure when implemented. Further, with these amazing additions, aiming for zero-waste creates a philosophy within the organization where employees can feel cared for in a society where the average person is concerned about their environmental impact, and that the company they work for is one that promotes sustainability long-term and is on the forefront of eco-consciousness in business.

2020年商务英语考试高级阅读材料二

Social Media, the Modern Day Radio of Music

Jenna Strauss

Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road,” featuring Billy Ray Cyrus, continues to rule the Billboard Hot 100 for a record breaking 17th week, dismantling the record for the most time tallied at No. 1 in the chart’s six-decade history. The “Old Town Road” outpaced Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee’s “Despacito”, featuring Justin Bieber, and Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men’s “One Sweet Day”, which spent 16 weeks at No. 1 on the Hot 100 in 2017 and 1995-96, respectively. What is even more spectacular than the success of Lil Nas X’s debut record is how it initially gained its traction. The record went viral on TikTok, one of the most popular and most interesting social media apps on the planet, which recently hit one billion downloads across Android and iOS.

The success of “Old Town Road” hasn’t just blurred lines in musical genres, but is reshaping the way artists, labels, and marketing executives think about social media and its place in the life cycle of breaking a hit record. As the reach and scale of social media has allowed artists to tap into a global audience, marketing a record in today’s landscape requires executives and management teams to think from a digital first lense. This mindset has become even more critical, as major social media platforms continue to drive music discovery.

Consider the lifecycle of artist discovery from the pre-social media age to today. Prior to social, music was discovered pertinently through radio, which due to the difficulty of distribution, labels almost outright controlled. The linear path to breaking a record was clearer when the consumption platforms were less saturated with user generated content and when there were just less platforms overall one could actually pay attention too. Fast forward to today, and social media has opened up a direct to fan communication platform, which has resulted in artists viding for fans’ social currency. Why? The lifecycle of an artist to reaching the gen Z and millennial fan requires the use of social media, from the most popular platform in the world Facebook to emerging platforms like TikTok.

For instance, in a recent report from Music Watch, the research firm found that 9 out of 10 social media users do a music-related activity within the framework of an app. More specifically, the report found that Instagram leads the way, with 56 percent of users following, sharing or tagging musicians; Twitter comes next, with 51 percent; and Facebook has 44 percent of respondents liking a musician or artist – a number that rises to 47 percent among daily users. Among Snapchat users, 68 percent viewed or posted photos from live music events, while 23 percent captioned their posts with song lyrics.

With that in mind, every artist campaign needs to focus on not only creative content that puts an act above the cat in your Instagram feed, but also how this content can be easily shared. Sharing to earn social currency, is the most direct path to building a hit record in today’s music discovery ecosystem. Is your single or album release ready?

2020年商务英语考试高级阅读材料三

Uber and Lyft Are Actually Making Traffic Worse in Some Cities

Lydia Dishman

It was a big promise to build an entire business on. But for the last handful of years, both Uber and Lyft have capitalized on the notion that by providing rides to people on demand via an app, traffic and pollution would be mitigated – especially in major urban centers. New research from both the ride-hailing juggernauts now suggests that’s not the case.

A joint analysis led by transportation consultancy Fehr & Peers examined Uber’s and Lyft’s combined mileage in September 2018 in the metro areas of Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. New York City wasn’t studied because of its vast public transportation system.

The results (which include city centers and their surrounding suburbs) reveal that, overall, Uber and Lyft make up just 1% to 3% of vehicle miles overall in the six metro areas. However, in places like San Francisco county, Uber and Lyft account for as much as 13.4% of all vehicle miles. It’s 8% in Boston, and 7.2% in Washington, D.C.. On average, between the six cities, as much as 62% of miles driven had a passenger. The rest were drivers on their way to pick up someone or just driving around between getting booked for a ride.

However, both Uber and Lyft are justifiably pointing their fingers toward the biggest cause of traffic and emissions: privately owned and commercial vehicles. Those account for 87% to 99% of total miles in the six areas studied.

Lyft’s chief policy officer, Anthony Fox.x (a former U.S. secretary of transportation), says this is a good time to consider congestion pricing to ease traffic, as is being implemented in Manhattan. Fox.x is pushing for a democratic approach to this. “The most effective congestion pricing model is one that applies to all vehicles on the road, including private automobiles, ridesharing, and commercial vehicles such as truc