Full video

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Hello and welcome to Real Easy English.

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In this podcast, we have real conversations in easy English

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to help you learn.

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I'm Neil.

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And I'm Beth.

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Did you know you can watch a video of this podcast on our website?

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Go to bbclearningenglish.com.

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Hi Beth, how are you today?

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I'm very good, thank you, Neil. How are you?

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I'm very good. What are we talking about?

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Well, today we are talking about waste.

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So, that's what we call things that we don't want anymore,

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like rubbish or things that we've used, and we now don't need them.

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So, for example, after I've eaten some crisps as a snack,

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the... the packet is rubbish – it's waste.

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Are you good at dealing with waste?

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I think so. I mean, at home we recycle.

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We can recycle glass, plastic, metal, card.

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All the usual things that we recycle here in the UK. What about you?

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Yeah, I do what I'm supposed to do.

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So, we have a separate bin for different things –

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for plastic and for glass and for paper and for food.

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Yeah.

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When I was a kid, everything went in the same bin.

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Really?

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Yeah.

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And now that seems really crazy and really bad.

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Yeah.

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So, I think we are better now at dealing with waste,

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but probably there's more things we could do.

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Yeah, I would think so. Yeah.

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Something that I do as well in... is when I'm in a supermarket,

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I try to not buy fruit and veg that's wrapped in plastic.

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I'll always try and buy the individual products like apples on their own,

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or, you know, a courgette.

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You don't need a courgette that's wrapped in plastic.

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Well, that's a good idea,

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but sometimes it's actually quite difficult to find things

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that aren't covered in plastic because we rely on plastic so much.

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Yeah, I know that is true.

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You know what people do these days,

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which is great, that they didn't used to do? Carry reusable water bottles.

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That's true.

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Almost everybody carries a bottle.

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And just a few years ago, people bought plastic bottles

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of water all the time.

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Yeah, I remember when I was teaching in a classroom

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and I'd sometimes have students.

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They would come to London from all over the world,

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and every day they would go to a supermarket and buy a plastic bottle.

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And I used to... I used to say sometimes, you know, 'Why? Buy a reusable one.'

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And then you're not using this plastic all the time.

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Yeah. We have a word for that, don't we?

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Single-use plastic.

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Yeah. So we have to try and avoid single-use plastics.

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What about water?

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So water waste.

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I really like having a bath just to relax,

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but sometimes I feel really guilty about it because it's using up

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quite a lot of water.

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Yeah, I prefer showers, which is good because they use less water.

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So, Beth, is there anything that you are planning to do to cut down further

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on the waste that you create?

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I should probably have fewer baths.

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I mean, I maybe have one a week, so... I mean, I shower too, of course.

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But maybe I could have a bath less often.

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Find other ways of relaxing which are less wasteful.

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What about you? Anything you want to cut back on?

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Yeah, I think, we talked about single-use plastic.

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You know, clingfilm,

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the very thin, like, sheet...

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sheets of plastic that you wrap food in.

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Yeah.

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I always feel bad when I use that stuff, but it's also really convenient

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and does its job well keeping a sandwich together or whatever.

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But I don't like it, so I want to cut down on my use of clingfilm.

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Let's recap the vocabulary we heard in this conversation.

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We had 'waste'. 'Waste' is things that are unwanted like rubbish,

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and we can also describe something as 'a waste'

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when someone uses something they don't need to,

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or they throw something away after not using it.

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So, for example, when my kids don't finish their dinner, that's a waste.

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We had 'single-use plastics'.

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These are plastic materials that we use once and then throw away.

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So, for example, food wrappers and shopping bags.

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We heard 'recycle', which means to collect rubbish

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in order to make materials that can be used again.

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We can also describe something as 'recyclable'.

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It means it can be recycled.

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It can be used again.

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And we heard some common phrasal verbs that we use when talking

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about the environment.

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So, we had 'to rely on', which means need something in order to function.

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For example, we rely on plastic a lot in our daily lives.

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We can also say 'cut down on', which means to reduce something.

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And we also hear 'cut back on'.

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So, for example, I want to cut back on single-use plastic.

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That's it for this episode of Real Easy English.

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If you want to learn more phrasal verbs about the environment,

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then Georgie has made a whole video on this.

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You'll find the link in the notes below.

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See you then.

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Bye!