The growth of consumerism has led to a 'throw-away' culture where people
are more concerned with acquiring material possessions than protecting the
environment.
To what extent do you agree or disagree with this opinion?
In this day and age, the rapid rise in consumerism has given a chance for
“throw-away’ culture to be a predominant trend in people’s lives, where people
ignore the sustainable environment to pursue a materialistic lifestyle. From my
perspective, I totally agree with this argument as this problem will have some
detrimental impacts on the environment as well as human beings.
Firstly, consumerism nowadays will promote overconsumption and the amount
of waste, most of which is non-biodegradable. Many people constantly buy new
products while their old ones are still functional due to the mentality of not
wanting to miss out. A typical example is that people buy clothes often to
always have the latest designs and not be out of date. Taking advantage of this
mentality, companies in the fast fashion industry always produce new designs to
attract consumers instead of focusing on the quality of the product. Therefore,
the usage time of these products tends to be shorter, which is also a reason for
users to buy more new products, causing more waste, especially non-
biodegradable waste.
As a consequence, the amount of waste in the environment is increasing, causing
a decrease in environmental stability, affecting the living environment of
humans and other creatures on earth. Waste that shopping activities release into
the environment is usually industrial waste, clothing waste, and plastic waste
that will exist in the natural environment for a long time, polluting water, soil,
and air, causing diseases for humans. Not only that, when companies produce
large quantities of products in an uncontrolled manner to serve people's
materialistic lifestyles, they also release a large amount of emissions into the
environment. And when the environment is polluted, it is likely to negatively
affect the economy, affecting consumers themselves.
To conclusion, I consider that following the trend of buying a lot of new things
and throwing away old things in a short time is unnecessary and has a long-term
impact on the environment. People should pay more attention to their living
environment instead of having a materialistic and luxurious lifestyle by buying
things that have long-term value instead of choosing items that have attractive
appearance but of poor quality.
READING
Passage 2
14. C
15. B
16.E
17.A
18.C
19.B
20.D
21.A
22.C
23.A
[Link]
[Link]
[Link]
27.B
28.A
29.A
30.C
31.A
[Link]
[Link] Given
[Link]
[Link]
[Link]
37.F
38.G
39.D
40.B
LISTENING
1. collecting
2. record
3. West
4. transport
5. art
6. hospital
7. garden
8. quiz
9. tickets
[Link]
11.B
12.C
13.C
14.B
15.D
16.C
17.G
18.A
19.E
20.F
21.D and E
22.D and E
23.D
24.G
25.A
26.E
27.F
28.A
29.A
30.C
31.321000
[Link]
[Link]
34. smartphone
35.
[Link]
[Link]
[Link]
[Link]
[Link]