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1.VOA常速
【Bottles to Flake: Plastic’s Journey Continues】
TEXT:They traveled hundreds of kilometers before today. Now begins the next leg of a journey that spans the entire globe. Welcome to one of the United States’ largest plastic recycling plants.
“On an average week we receive anywhere from 1 to 1.5 million lbs [454,000 to 680,000 kg] of bottles in to the plant,” said Jay Chilton, who manages Clear Path Recycling’s monster facility in Fayetteville, North Carolina. “We receive about 8-10 trucks a day coming into the plant, and a truckload is usually about 40,000 pounds.”
That’s more than 18,000 kilograms of plastic every single day. The goods come in bales.
“These bales on average are about 900lbs [400 kg]; and they can range anywhere from 600lbs [270 kg] to 1500lbs [680 kg] in this configuration. This is accumulation of nearly 10-15 weeks of delivery,” Chilton said.
Nearly three football fields of plastic piled high sit just a short ride from the processing plant, where a bottle’s life is forever changed.
“This is where the whole bottles enter the whole bottle wash… it’s just like your front-end loading washing machine at your house. It’s just a lot longer, and a lot bigger,” Chilton said.
Hot water washes the labels off of drink bottles and shakes out loose debris.
“It’s kinda like your flour sifter at home where you’re sifting-out the big chunks of flour,” Chilton said.
Except these are big chunks of shredded plastic. Hundreds of thousands of kilograms of them. Industry insiders call them “P-E-T flake,” and it’s this product that another facility will buy, melt and mold into something else. The flake fills bags, trucks and is sometimes stored in skyscraping silos.
“These silos hold roughly 300 metric tons of PET flake, and the one we’re standing on now, we have about 150 metric tons of flake, and there’s three of these,” Chilton said.
That means that at any one moment, nearly one kiloton of plastic flake waits here for its next evolution.
2.VOA慢速
【Do It Yourself: Raising Angora Goats】
TEXT:This is the VOA Special English Agriculture Report.
Has anyone ever tried to get your goat? To "get your goat" is an expression. It means to make you mad. A good friend might tell you: "Don't worry about what that person said. He was just trying to get your goat."
But there are plenty of good reasons to get a goat -- and not just for milk or meat. The animals can help control weeds. They can be friendly with children and adults. And they can make money with their hair.
Cashmere goats produce cashmere . Angora goats produce -- no, not angora. Angora fiber comes from rabbits. Angora goats produce mohair . Mohair is used to make clothing, carpets and other products.
The goats came from the Anatolian plains. Their name comes from the Turkish city of Ankara. The Mohair Council of America says the first Angora goats arrived in the United States in eighteen forty-nine. Seven females and two males were imported.
Today the United States is one of the world's leading producers of mohair. The other top sources are South Africa and Turkey. Ninety percent of the mohair from the United States comes from Texas.
An adult Angora can produce as much as seven kilograms of hair each year. The value of the coat depends on the age, size and condition of the goat. As Angoras get older, their hair becomes thicker and less valuable.
The goats need their mother's milk for the first three or four months. They reach full maturity at about two years. But even then they are smaller than most sheep and milk goats.
Cashmere goats are usually larger than Angoras. Cashmere goats can grow big enough to be kept with sheep and cattle.
The outer hair of the animal is called guard hair . Behind it is the valuable material on a cashmere goat. Some farmers just comb their cashmere goats to remove the hair. But if the goats do get a haircut, it often happens when they would naturally lose their winter coat, between December and March.
Angora goats generally get their hair cut twice a year, in the spring and fall. Owners do it themselves or hire a professional shearer. An Angora without a coat can get cold. So it may need to be kept extra warm for about a month after shearing.
参考译文:这里是美国之音慢速英语农业报道。
曾有人想get your goat吗？get your goat是个成语，意思是“让你生气”。好朋友或许会说，“别在意那人说的话，他只是想惹你生气罢了。”
但养一头goat（山羊）却是有很多用处的，不仅是可以喝奶或吃肉。这种动物可以帮助控制杂草，它们对儿童和大人都很友好，还可以用它们的毛发来赚钱。
克什米尔细毛羊能生产克什米尔细毛，安哥拉山羊可不生产安哥拉。安哥拉纤维来自兔子，安哥拉山羊生产的是安哥拉山羊毛，安哥拉山羊毛可用来制作衣服、地毯等产品。
这些山羊来自安那托利亚大平原，名字取自土耳其城市 安卡拉，美国安哥拉山羊毛委员会称，第一批安哥拉山羊是在1849年到达美国的，包括7头母羊和两头公羊。
今天，美国是全世界安哥拉山羊毛的主要产地，其他主要产地是南美和土耳其。美国90%的安哥拉山羊毛来自德克萨斯州。
一头成年安哥拉山羊每年能生产7公斤羊毛，羊毛的价值取决于山羊的年龄、大小和状况。安哥拉山羊变老时，它们的羊毛会变粗，就不那么值钱了。
山羊在最初三到四个月的时候需要饮食母乳，两年后完全成熟，但即使那时，它们仍比大多数绵羊和奶山羊体型都要小。
克什米尔细毛羊通常比安哥拉山羊要大，克什米尔山羊能长到和绵羊和牛一样大。
山羊外面的那层毛叫针毛，后面就是克什米尔山羊身上宝贵的部分。有的农场主会为克什米尔山羊梳理以取走羊毛，但如果给山羊剃毛，它们通常会失去冬天12月到3月间的外套。
安哥拉山羊通常每年剃毛两次，时间是春天和秋天。养殖者会自己剃，或雇佣一位职业剪羊毛人。失去外套的安哥拉山羊会感觉冷，所以需要在剃毛后的大约一个月内给山羊以额外的保暖。
本VOA慢速译文由可可英语Sunny提供。
