2020年中级商务英语考试阅读材料

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2020年中级商务英语考试阅读材料一

Lego Wants Your Old Legos Back – So It Can Give Them Away

Adele Peters

If you have a box of old Lego bricks sitting unused in an attic or garage, Lego now wants them back. In a new pilot program, consumers in the U.S. can dump old bricks in a box, print a free shipping label, and send them off to Give Back Box, a social enterprise that will clean the toys and repackage them for Teach for America and the Boys and Girls Club of Boston..

“We want the bricks to be played with as much as possible,” says Tim Brooks, vice president of corporate responsibility at Lego Group. It’s a small piece of the company’s work to become more environmentally sustainable. The company has invested in wind farms in Germany and the U.K. that now produce more electricity than it uses at its factories, offices, and stores. It’s beginning to make its toys out of plant-based plastic instead of petroleum-based plastic; by 2030, it plans to make everything out of plant-based or recycled materials. And while the bricks themselves are recyclable – if someone lives in a city that accepts the right kind of plastic – the company wants to keep them in use.

The classic Lego brick is made from a tough material called ABS, and the toys can be played with for decades without breaking. It’s already fairly common, of course, that Legos are handed down from one child to another. “We don’t want to compete with anything that’s already going on, if people are already giving bricks away to friends or family or local charities… it deserves to be played with by multiple generations,” Brooks says. But the company realized that there was an opportunity to put more of the toys back in use. In research, about 35% of its customers said that they would be “extremely likely” to participate in the new take-back program if they had access to it.

The company looked for a partner that could process the used toys while maintaining Lego’s standard of quality. Give Back Box will steam clean the toys and repackage them by hand. “We want to make sure that all kids are getting a great experience,” he says. “It shouldn’t be that you get a really inferior experience just because the bricks are donated.” If the pilot goes well, Brooks says, it may expand.

He sees it as one version of the circular economy, a system of keeping materials in use – and argues that the toys themselves illustrate the idea of the circular economy. “You can build a rocket and then you can take it apart and build a ship, and take that apart and build a car or a house or whatever you like,” Brooks says. As toys are reused, that’s another circular system. “We want to show that great quality toys like Lego can be used in lots of repeating circles – used, reused, donated, used, reused, donated.”

2020年中级商务英语考试阅读材料二

Eating Mushrooms Every Week Appears to Lower the Risk of Prostate Cancer

Kashmira Gander

Eating mushrooms could lower a man’s risk of developing prostate cancer, scientists believe. However, experts have stressed no single food is known to lower a person’s risk of developing the disease by itself.

Researchers studied 36,499 men in Japan aged between 40 and 79 over a period of 13 years. The participants filled out questionnaires on their lifestyle habits, including their diets.

Those who ate mushrooms at least three times a week had a 17 percent lower risk of developing prostate cancer than those who ate the vegetable once a week, according to the paper published in the journal International Journal of Cancer. This dropped to 8 percent in those who consumed the fungus twice a week.

The link was most obvious in men aged 50 or older. The association lingered no matter how many vegetables, fruits, meat or dairy products, the participants ate.

The researchers aren’t sure of the mechanism behind this link. They believe it could be due to some mushrooms, particularly shiitake, oyster, maitake and king oysters, contain antioxidants. Past studies also indicate the fungus has anti-cancer properties.

While there is no way to prevent prostate cancer, the authors wrote, past research has suggested eating a healthy diet full of vegetables and fruits could cut the risk.

The authors also acknowledged their study was limited because the participants only reported how many mushrooms they ate at the start of the study, and this could have changed over time.

“This finding suggests that habitual mushroom intake might help to reduce prostate cancer risk. Further studies in other populations and settings are required to confirm this relationship,” they wrote.

Weilin Wu, a health information officer at Cancer Research U.K. who did not work on the study, told Newsweek: “Since not much is known about preventing prostate cancer, studies like this are intriguing. But we need a lot more research to back it up and explain any possible link before we can say that people should stock up on mushrooms to cut their prostate cancer risk.

“It’s unlikely that one single ‘miracle food’ will reduce the risk of cancer by itself,” he stressed. “And your overall diet is much more important than eating any one particular type of food. So instead of packing your shopping basket full of mushrooms, try thinking about having a range of vegetables, whole grains and fruits as part of a balanced diet and a way to help you keep a healthy weight.”

Ying Wang, a principal scientist in Epidemiology Research at the American Cancer Society who did not work on the study, told Newsweek food questionnaires are subject to error, and other unmeasured factors might explain the link.

“Readers should keep in mind that the evidence is still limited,” he said. “The finding in the Japanese population may not be expanded to other populations. Further studies are needed before providing dietary guidelines for prostate cancer prevention.”

Prostate cancer is the most common form of the disease in the U.S. in men. According to the American Cancer Society, one in nine men will be diagnosed with the disease, amounting to over 174,000 new cases each year.