i. Polythene shopping bags and wrappers are a potential threat to urban environment. Once you have discarded them after use, you do not lose your link with them. They return to you in a variety of ways, though you do not realise it. For example, they choke your drains and provide breeding facilities to deadly germs.
ii. A recent study has shown that about 250 tonnes of plastic waste come out of various colonies of major cities every day. This disrupts the sewer system, the essential arteries of city life, choke the land mass and clog the pores of the wetlands.
iii. Unfortunately, even the villages and small towns are not free from this danger. Millions of people returning to their home towns everyday carry their shopping in colourful bags. This pleases their family and children, who after preserving them for a time dispose them in wells, rivers, tanks and drains. Many throw them off into the fields. They do it with a sense of pride, to show off. When their neighbours see that their men from the cities regularly send them those good things of life, they are impressed.
iv. All over the world the worst offenders are the upper income groups of the so-called posh colonies. Though educated, the residents of these affluent areas are unaware of the damage done by the plastic bags. Millions of children in schools carry their lunch boxes in plastic bags. They callously throw them away and cause an unhealthy environment.
v. As it is convenient for mothers to wrap the food in plastic, it is difficult to persuade them against doing this. According to a drill master of a school, it becomes a drill to clean the fields after the children leave. When the midday meal scheme is fully implemented, it must be seen that no plastic wrappers are used.
vi. As these wrappers are light in weight, they are borne aloft by the wind causing visual shocks. Unlike cotton or paper bags they remain undissolved in the mud and stop rain water from seeping deep in the earth. This affects the natural growth of greenery.
Questions:
a. How do polythene bags become health hazards?
b. What are the findings of the latest research about plastic waste?
c. How do the school children pollute the environment?
d. How do plastic bags hamper the growth of greenery?
e. Find the synonyms for the following words from the given passage:
thrown & wealthy
f. Find the antonyms for the following words from the given passage:
poor & shame
g. Give an appropriate title to the passage.
h. Write the meanings of the following words and frame sentences which should not match the content of the passage.
Damage & posh
i. Give the essence of the passage in not more than 75 words.