IELTS Plus: Episode 69 - Recycling

Hello and welcome back to the IELTS Plus English podcast and today we have a tough topic. We're talking about recycling. It's back... to a tough topic today I think we've been on a run of some fairly easy episodes so my main advice that I always give to my students when you have a tough topic bring it into your world We're going to be talking about recycling today. I see here there's some tough words, some tough questions. So as much as possible, don't be drawn into the question too much.

Stay in your world. What I'm imagining is I'm going to be talking about dividing rubbish, maybe talking about... upcycling furniture. These are areas I'm going to be comfortable talking about when I talk about recycling. Upcycle is actually one of today's words. On today's word list, we've got some great words, biodegradable, landfill, and upcycle, as I mentioned.

And this is available in the IELTS Plus Total Speaking textbook, which you can find on www.britplus.net. So head over there and we'll get straight into it today. It's going to be tough. Let's start with some part ones. Question one. What items do you usually recycle? I usually recycle... Definitely things like the plastic bottles. Not so much in Korea, but I remember in the UK, we would recycle food rubbish as compost.

So we would put things like even coffee grounds in the compost, which was very good for feeding the garden and helping the plants. Next question. How important is recycling in your community? Well I think in my current community the recycling division of... trash division of rubbish is very important in my area certainly you have to divide everything you know the different types of plastics bottles cans

paper, food. I don't know what it's like in your country, but it's really strict with the way that you divide your rubbish. Okay, part two. So today's part two, let's see.

Describe a recycling program you know about. Well, I can't think of a specific recycling program. This is one of those tough ones where... on the surface, you'll feel, I don't know, a recycling program. I don't have an answer. But perhaps... I can use one of those answers I just gave and talk about division of trash. That seems like a recycling program done by the government. Let's give it a go. So we'll put two minutes on the clock, as I always do.

And my time starts now. I'd like to tell you about dividing rubbish in Korea. Around 15 years ago, I came to Korea and I was quite taken aback by the way that they divide rubbish. The waste is really strictly divided into six or seven categories here. And that is... sorted and taken to different areas because I suppose that they're trying to avoid landfill as much as possible.

I remember specifically I put my food rubbish in a black bag that I got from a store and I got in trouble with the house owner for... not using the correct bag to put my food rubbish. So I was really surprised and it was kind of a culture shock. Let me tell you a little more about dividing rubbish in Korea. So as I said, it's definitely, it's divided into several... categories um different there's different types of plastics you've got polystyrene the white polystyrene um food cans etc

For some things like food and general waste, you have to buy the correct bag to put it in. So that actually costs us quite a lot of money just to put it in the right bag. bag and then in the right bin outside the apartment. So it's a very strict system that we do have to pay for. For me personally, although it does take time and money, as long as it's good for the environment, I'm happy.

I have heard some people say that dividing waste is a waste of time. It's not worth it. Okay. Wow, that's very loud. Okay, that's my two minutes up. So... That was going okay. As you always hear, I progressed through my structure and I got to opinion. And as I always say... I never make it to the future. That's just my backup. If I make it to the future, fine. That part of my structure, but in this case, didn't need it and I rarely do. So.

I don't think I'm using a great deal of today's language. So let's be a bit stricter with that in part three. And we'll get going with that now. How can schools and businesses contribute to recycling efforts? I think that businesses such as coffee shops and restaurants primarily have to avoid using single-use plastics. I think that's really important. In Korea, you can see that especially coffee shops are really trying to avoid those types of materials.

So an example of that is in Starbucks, where instead of giving a plastic straw, they now give a biodegradable paper straw, which is great. it's good for the environment unfortunately in that case for me personally the biodegradable straw affects the taste of the coffee so i'm not a big fan of that method but it's a good direction to go in. Excellent. Okay. Next question. What are some challenges associated with recycling? I suppose...

The biggest challenge is making sure that people adhere to the rules of recycling. I mentioned earlier about the division of waste. And if everyone follows it, it's a great system. But you only need a few people to break that system, to break the rule. And then... They have to resort everything in the recycling facility and it becomes a waste of time. So that's probably the biggest...

hurdle they have with this recycling. The way that they overcome this is with campaigns and making sure that everyone is educated on how to divide their trash.

Good. Okay. By the way, you can hear me using the word trash. You can hear me using the word rubbish. Both are fine. Rubbish is actually British. Trash is used in America. But as you know, a lot of words in America... have spread around the world and we use them also last question how has recycling changed over the years in your country i in korea

I feel like it hasn't changed a great deal. So let me talk a little bit about England. What I've noticed with England is when I first lived in England, my whole life actually, you put everything in one bag. You didn't think about what to do with your rubbish and where to divide it. It was all in one bag. The one thing we did well was that we used composting. We composted our food and various things.

One thing I notice nowadays is that upcycling has become quite popular. So people get old furniture. I think my family did this as well. Old furniture and repurpose it. Or just simply they can change the outside, they paint it and they can use it again. So that's become quite a popular trend that's very good for the environment. Great. Okay.

Pretty happy with that today. I've gone very quickly, I think. That's a shorter episode. So I hope you enjoyed that. As I said, difficult topics like today. Bring it into your world. You heard my answers today. Although I was happy with them, they were fairly limited. I was just talking. I talked a lot about dividing rubbish. Why did I do that?

Because it's what I know about. There's no point getting into the weeds of things you don't know about, getting into campaigns you just saw a little bit on TV and then... you've got nothing to say. So stay in your area. Stay with what you're comfortable with. So that's the biggest lesson today. I hope you enjoyed this topic, recycling, and I'll be back next week to talk about seasons much easier. So have a wonderful week, study hard, and I'll see you next week to talk about seasons.