full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Charles Moore: Seas of plastic

Unscramble the Blue Letters


Let's talk tarsh.

You know, we had to be taught to renounce the powerful coovernatsin ethic we developed during the Great Depression and World War II. After the war, we needed to direct our enormous production ctapicay toward creation of poutdrcs for peacetime. Life Magazine helped in this effort by ainoncnnug the introduction of throwaways that would liberate the housewife from the drudgery of doing dsehis.

Mental note to the liberators: throwaway plastics take a lot of space and don't biodegrade. Only we humans make waste that nature can't digest.

Plastics are also hard to recycle. A teacher told me how to express the under-five-percent of plastics recoerved in our watse stream. It's diddly-point-squat. That's the percentage we recycle.

Open Cloze


Let's talk _____.

You know, we had to be taught to renounce the powerful ____________ ethic we developed during the Great Depression and World War II. After the war, we needed to direct our enormous production ________ toward creation of ________ for peacetime. Life Magazine helped in this effort by __________ the introduction of throwaways that would liberate the housewife from the drudgery of doing ______.

Mental note to the liberators: throwaway plastics take a lot of space and don't biodegrade. Only we humans make waste that nature can't digest.

Plastics are also hard to recycle. A teacher told me how to express the under-five-percent of plastics _________ in our _____ stream. It's diddly-point-squat. That's the percentage we recycle.

Solution


  1. capacity
  2. waste
  3. announcing
  4. recovered
  5. trash
  6. dishes
  7. conservation
  8. products

Original Text


Let's talk trash.

You know, we had to be taught to renounce the powerful conservation ethic we developed during the Great Depression and World War II. After the war, we needed to direct our enormous production capacity toward creation of products for peacetime. Life Magazine helped in this effort by announcing the introduction of throwaways that would liberate the housewife from the drudgery of doing dishes.

Mental note to the liberators: throwaway plastics take a lot of space and don't biodegrade. Only we humans make waste that nature can't digest.

Plastics are also hard to recycle. A teacher told me how to express the under-five-percent of plastics recovered in our waste stream. It's diddly-point-squat. That's the percentage we recycle.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
bottle caps 5
long beach 4
plastic fragments 2
certified organic 2


Important Words


  1. announcing
  2. biodegrade
  3. capacity
  4. conservation
  5. creation
  6. depression
  7. developed
  8. digest
  9. direct
  10. dishes
  11. drudgery
  12. effort
  13. enormous
  14. ethic
  15. express
  16. great
  17. hard
  18. helped
  19. housewife
  20. humans
  21. ii
  22. introduction
  23. liberate
  24. life
  25. lot
  26. magazine
  27. mental
  28. nature
  29. needed
  30. note
  31. peacetime
  32. percentage
  33. plastics
  34. powerful
  35. production
  36. products
  37. recovered
  38. recycle
  39. renounce
  40. space
  41. stream
  42. talk
  43. taught
  44. teacher
  45. throwaway
  46. throwaways
  47. told
  48. trash
  49. war
  50. waste
  51. world