Shadowing Practice: Environmental Impacts Of Consumer Products - Learn English Speaking with Video
Creando lección...
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the in
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MUSIC We often don't realise it,
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but the decisions we make as consumers,
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from what products we buy to how we end up disposing of them,
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of them all affect other people in other places.
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I want to know more about the impact that the manufacturing and consumption of goods has on different environments around the world.
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Let's hear from Kathleen Griffith about the environmental impact of manufacturing.
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Countries that make consumer goods or produce the raw materials are going to be affected environmentally.
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From previous old-fashioned behaviours such as making garments
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and just basically getting rid of waste into the rivers
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or the waterways and therefore the fish die
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and the rivers might get green algae and it can all pollute people that live around those rivers,
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it really can be quite devastating.
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You would think we would have gotten better at that by now
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but if you know there's been recent media attention to the bleaching of Great Barrier Reef
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and a lot of protests about how close we're discharging stuff into
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that part of the world or that part of Australia's waterways
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and that it is having a detrimental effect on the Barrier Reef.
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Now that all comes from stuff that's being manufactured here in Australia.
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If we take an example of a country that does a lot of manufacturing,
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China, they have a a lot of trouble with pollution.
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You have to pretty much wear a mask if you're in one of the tier one cities of China.
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It is affecting people's health,
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it's reducing their life expectancy,
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and people in China in those tier one and tier two cities are very,
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very concerned about the effect of that pollution on their children.
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Sourcing raw materials and producing goods have an environmental impact in our country and around the world.
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So what can we do as consumers to help minimise this impact?
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I've been thinking about my lifestyle and the things that I buy.
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I'm buying diamond earrings for a friend.
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I can't say I know much about where they come from,
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so that's where I'll start my research.
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Diamonds are one of the most precious and sought-after stones on the planet.
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However, around 4% of the rough diamonds sold on the world market are known as blood diamonds
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because of the fact they originate from places of civil war and conflict like Sierra Leone,
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Angola and the Ivory Coast.
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These territories are often controlled by groups of rebels who sell the diamonds to pay for guns and weapons.
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The illegal diamond traders cause the deaths and displacement of millions of African people.
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The mining of diamonds has also had a severe environmental impact on several parts of Africa.
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In the Kono district of eastern Sierra Leone,
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thousands of abandoned mining pits remain filled with stagnant rainwater and malaria-carrying mosquitoes.
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Wildlife has vanished from the area and what was once fertile farmland is now barren and uninhabitable.
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There's a lot of consequences of diamond mining.
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What about makeup?
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I need to look a bit deeper here.
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Sodium Laurel Palmate, I've heard of that.
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It's the scientific term for palm oil.
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Let's have a look.
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Palm oil is extracted from the fruit of the Eleus genensis species of palm,
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indigenous to West Africa.
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Because of its high resistance to oxidisation and decay,
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the oil is used in a variety of products to increase their shelf life.
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This includes everything from cosmetic products to soaps and shampoos to instant noodles and chocolate.
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The cost of the widespread use of palm oil has been massive deforestation in Malaysia
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and Indonesia where 90% of palm oil is currently produced.
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Since oil palms need high humidity and temperatures and a large amount of land,
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rainforests are regularly cleared to make way for commercial plantations,
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taking a devastating toll on local plant, animal and bird species.
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Another environmental issue is the dumping of electronic waste.
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Do you know where 70% of the electronic waste generated globally eventually ends up?
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Guayu in the Guangdong province of China,
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it's notorious for being home to the largest electronic waste dump in the world.
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Electronic and other waste is shipped to China,
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and various other parts of the world,
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including poorer countries, where environmental protection laws are weak or non-existent.
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Environmental impacts from adding heavy metals to landfill,
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or the burning of circuit boards and plastic wires,
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and washing of electronic items to recover metals, go unchecked.
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Work areas in these recycling centres are often poorly ventilated and there is no protective gear provided.
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Workers are exposed to toxic fumes from heavy metals.
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Together with hydrocarbon ashes, heavy metals are also released into the soil, water and air.
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People are feeling the effects.
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In China's Guangdong province, children have been found to have abnormally high levels of lead in their blood.
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Those are just three examples of how our use of products contributes to the environmental decline in other parts of the world.
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The good news though, is that more
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and more businesses are using sustainable practices to reduce the impact of manufacturing on the environment.
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Here's a company that specialises in sustainable packaging and recycling practices.
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Vizi processes recyclables for millions of households and businesses across Australia and New Zealand each year.
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They recover over 1.7 million tonnes of paper and cardboard,
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221,000 tonnes of glass, 92,000 tonnes of plastics and 34,000 tonnes of metals.
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Visi first started off as a manufacturer of cardboard boxes
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and is now one of the world's leading packaging and recycling companies that employs over 5,000 staff.
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We collect and process materials such as plastic,
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cardboard, paper, aluminium, steel and glass and we use this to make our own recycled and new packaging.
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Recycling and sustainability is so important at Visi as we are a manufacturer of new packaging.
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We collect and process this material which then creates a closed loop.
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This helps us reduce the need for natural resources.
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Australians spend over half a billion dollars a year on bottled water.
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We all know about putting empty plastic bottles in recycling bins,
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but what happens to them after that?
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So a plastic bottle
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that is placed into a recycling bin is collected by a dedicated recycling truck
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and that material then comes back to what we would call our MRF or our material recovery facility.
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And that is where we separate and sort all the different material types,
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whether it is glass, plastic,
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aluminium, steel, cardboard and paper.
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We use a combination of either machinery or manual hand sorters to separate this material.
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Once that material is then separated,
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is then sent away to different divisions of the business to be recycled and turned into new packaging.
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Plastic bottles are typically sorted using our optical sorting machine.
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This machine separates the three types of plastics into three separate categories.
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So it will separate our HDPE,
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our PET bottles and our mixed plastics,
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and they are then baled separately and sent off to our plant in Smithfield for reprocessing and remanufacturing.
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So once the plastic bottles arrive at our Smithfield plant in New South Wales,
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they're then ready for reprocessing.
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So the plastic bottles are flaked,
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palletised, moulded into little preforms,
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which would be the mould for the end product.
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Those preforms are then blow moulded into the final product,
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which is a plastic bottle.
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They're then ready to hit the shop shelves.
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However, up to 36% of plastic bottles aren't recycled,
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which means that hundreds of millions of bottles end up as waste every year.
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And if you don't think your personal recycling habits make much of a difference,
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then think about this.
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Statistics show that the average Australian produces two tonnes of landfill waste per year.
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So outside of always using the right bin and reusing a drink bottle or coffee cup,
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what else can we do to improve our recycling habits?
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I guess the first step is to purchase recyclable products when you're shopping.
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The other would be to make sure everyone in the household is educated on on what can
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and can't be recycled and how they should be utilising or using their bins within the home.
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Vizi is aiming for a future where everything that touches us can be recycled,
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where waste is a thing of the past,
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and we won't stop until we get there.
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Every product we use has an environmental impact,
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in some cases a devastating impact.
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It's up to us as consumers to be more aware of the wider implications of our buying decisions
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and to consider not just where our product has come from but where it's likely to end up.
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Vocabulario y notas de pronunciación para esta lección
Esta lección de conversación de nivel C1 se basa en el vídeo “Environmental Impacts Of Consumer Products”. Las palabras que más se repiten: plastic, bottle, recycling, impact, product. Este vídeo tiene 130 frases y 1439 palabras para practicar shadowing. La parte hablada dura 9:48. El hablante mantiene un ritmo constante de unas 147 palabras por minuto, cómodo para el shadowing. Solo el 79 % de las palabras está entre las 3.000 más comunes del inglés, por lo que el vocabulario es exigente.
Vocabulario clave de este vídeo
Las 15 palabras más avanzadas del vídeo, con su pronunciación y significado:
| Palabra | Pronunciación | Significado |
|---|---|---|
| recycle verbo | /ɹəˈsaɪkəl/ | reciclar |
| cardboard sustantivo | /ˈkɑɹdˌbɔɹd/ | cartón, cartulina |
| devastate verbo | /ˈdɛv.ə.steɪt/ | devastar |
| landfill sustantivo | /ˈlæn(d).fɪl/ | vertedero, tiradero |
| recyclable adjetivo | reciclable | |
| waterway sustantivo | /ˈwɔːtəweɪ/ | hidrovía, torrentera |
| aluminium sustantivo | /ˌæl.(j)uˈmɪn.i.əm/ | aluminio |
| shelf sustantivo | /ʃɛlf/ | estante, balda |
| dump verbo | /dʌmp/ | tirar a la basura, arrojar |
| abnormally adverbio | /æbˈnɔɹ.mə.li/ | anormalmente |
| barren adjetivo | /ˈbæɹən/ | estéril, infértil |
| deforestation sustantivo | /dɪˌfɒɹɪsˈteɪʃən/ | desmontadura, deforestación |
| earring sustantivo | /ˈɪəɹɪŋ/ | arete, arito |
| environmentally adverbio | ambientalmente | |
| farmland sustantivo | /ˈfɑːɹmlænd/ | chacra, chácara |
Phrasal verbs que vas a escuchar
| Palabra | Significado |
|---|---|
| end up verbo | terminar, ir a parar |
Gramática en este vídeo
Las estructuras que más usa el hablante, con las palabras exactas del vídeo:
| Estructura | En el vídeo |
|---|---|
| Voz pasiva be + participio pasado — importa lo que ocurre, no quién lo hace | be affected · being manufactured · are known |
| Present perfect have/has + participio pasado — una acción pasada que sigue importando ahora | has vanished · I've heard · has been |
Pronunciación a tener en cuenta
El hablante usa 15 contracciones y formas reducidas, como can't, don't, I've. Dilas en su forma corta, tal como las oyes.
- Los sonidos de “sh” y “zh”: shelf /ʃɛlf/, deforestation /dɪˌfɒɹɪsˈteɪʃən/, oxidization /ˌɑksɪdɪˈzeɪʃ(ə)n/, vanish /ˈvænɪʃ/, implication /ˌɪmpləˈkeɪʃən/
- Palabras largas — cuida el acento: aluminium /ˌæl.(j)uˈmɪn.i.əm/, abnormally /æbˈnɔɹ.mə.li/, deforestation /dɪˌfɒɹɪsˈteɪʃən/, expectancy /ɪkˈspɛktənsi/, originate /əˈɹɪd͡ʒɪneɪt/
Sonidos difíciles para hispanohablantes:
- /v/ — no es /b/: los dientes tocan el labio inferior: devastate /ˈdɛv.ə.steɪt/, vanish /ˈvænɪʃ/, ventilate /ˈvɛntɪleɪt/
- /z/ — sonora, no /s/: oxidization /ˌɑksɪdɪˈzeɪʃ(ə)n/, palletise /ˈpælɪtaɪz/, utilise /ˈjuːtɪlaɪz/, existent /ɪɡˈzɪst(ə)nt/, dispose /dɪsˈpoʊz/
- /dʒ/ — no es la “y” ni la “ch”: originate /əˈɹɪd͡ʒɪneɪt/, educate /ˈɛd͡ʒ.əˌkeɪt/, discharge /dɪsˈtʃɑɹdʒ/
Cómo practicar con este vídeo
- Escucha el vídeo entero una vez sin hablar y anota las palabras que no conoces.
- Haz shadowing frase por frase a velocidad normal, repitiendo cada una hasta que tu ritmo coincida con el del hablante.
- Grábate y compara con el original, prestando atención a palabras como recycle, cardboard, devastate.
¿Qué es la Técnica de Shadowing?
Shadowing es una técnica de aprendizaje de idiomas respaldada por la ciencia, desarrollada originalmente para la formación de intérpretes profesionales y popularizada por el políglota Dr. Alexander Arguelles. El método es simple pero poderoso: escuchas audio en inglés nativo y lo repites en voz alta de inmediato, como una sombra que sigue al hablante con solo 1-2 segundos de retraso. A diferencia de la escucha pasiva o los ejercicios de gramática, el shadowing obliga a tu cerebro y músculos de la boca a procesar y reproducir simultáneamente patrones de habla reales. Las investigaciones muestran que mejora significativamente la precisión de la pronunciación, la entonación, el ritmo, el habla conectada, la comprensión auditiva y la fluidez al hablar, convirtiéndola en una de las metodologías más efectivas para la preparación del IELTS Speaking y la comunicación en inglés en el mundo real.