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Here's a list of the wide spread ways in which our environment can be polluted:
First, a few different types of rubbish which are dumped on rubbish tips, burnt in incineration plants or just thrown into the next river or forest.
. The household waste. This is the type of rubbish which is produced by everyone of us everyday. It's all those bottles, packings and many other things that you throw away every day of your life.
A good thing with this rubbish is, that it has been reduced during the last years due to recycling of glass, aluminium, paper and plastic.
. Another important type is rubble (the rubbish left over from building sites and roadworks). It's the rubbish with the biggest share in tons of the whole mountain of waste produced every year.
. Then there is the so called industrial waste, the things which are left over by all types of industry, from a small carpenter to a car-factory.
. The last (and worst) type of garbage is the hazardous and toxic one. It's spread from simple batteries to chemical waste produced by big companies. Atomic waste which is probably the most dangerous of all also is a part of this rubbish-sort. All this rubbish have to be stored at special disposal sites.
But there isn't just the garbage which is a danger for our environment (although it would be enough if we had just this problem).
There isn't just the solid waste. We have fluid, gaseous and a few very special types of waste too.
. water pollution - The pollution of our rivers, lakes and the sea is a big problem for mankind. Not only that we need drinkable water to survive, and clean water to wash ourselves(at least, the most of us). Clean oceans are also important for the food production because for a big part of mankind fish is a very important food.
. air pollution - The pollution of our air is the one which probably affects our minds most at the moment. We hear of the global warming from papers and TV. We have to protect ourselves against the dangerous UV-rays which can cause skin cancer (and that these UV-rays have become so dangerous in the last years is a direct result of the pollution of our air), and people living in big cities and areas with high population density are moaning about the bad air.
And now, we'll come to a few types of pollution which aren't pollution in the way that they are dangerous in a physical or chemical way, but they also could affect our health.
(The audience may forgive me, if the following is partially taken not very seriously.)
. accustical pollution - This is the one of these which is nearest to traditional pollution, for it has been proved that very loud or constant noise produce illnesses and psychological damages. It's produced by trains, motorways, airports or maybe by any radio(depending on the type of music) near you.
. optical pollution - This is a more abstract one. An ugly picture or person could be an example of this, but the worse ones are buildings which are often an atrocity for our eyes. Causes for optical pollution by buildings are: bad painting, ugly shapes of a house or just that the building is completely displaced. (e.g.: a steel-glass house in an old village)
. The last one of this, lets call them psychological pollutions, is the mental pollution. This is the one that is often produced by politicians or other people who are in public life, but it could also be produced by the person who sits next to you.(or maybe this text is a mental pollution too - although I hope it isn't). Mental pollution appears most of the time as a kind of accustical or optical pollution of environment.
Well, these are a lot of problems for the future and will, of course, stay with us for a long time.
And if we have solved all environment problems on earth we'll have to continue in space because the technical scrap which orbits around earth is a not-so-small problem for spacecrafts of any kind and could damage satellites heavily. (even if these pieces are not bigger than a few millimetres)
Vocabulary:
rubbish, garbage(AE), waste Muell
rubbish tip Muelldeponie
incineration plant Muellverbrennungsanlage
household waste Hausmuell
rubble Bauschutt
mountain of waste Muellberg
industrial waste Industrieabfall
hazardous/special/toxic waste Sondermuell
atomic waste Atommuell
solid fest
fluid fluessig
gaseous gasfoermig
water pollution Wasserverschmutzung
air pollution Luftverschmutzung
skin cancer Hautkrebs
to moan jammern, stoehnen
accustical pollution akkustische Umweltverschmutzung
atrocity Grausamkeit
optical pollution optische Umweltverschmutzung
mental pollution geistige Umweltverschmutzung
scrap Schrott
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