单选题 America, unhappily, is bullish on garbage. Our production of refuse, now about 160 million tons a year, will rise to 193 million tons by the end of the century (21) nothing is done. This growing effluence of affluence, 3.5 pounds a day for every American, is a (22) of our consumer society, (23) watchwords are "convenience", "ready to use" and "throw away". And it has become a major national environmental issue. forcing citizens, (24) officials and private companies to (25) serious thought to rubbish.
The contentious reality is that the (26) cheap and simple solution to trashdumping it in a landfill just beyond the edge of town (27) no longer workable, particularly around major cities. Old dumps, which now get 8% of all garbage, are filling up, end new (28) have become virtually (29) to build with the result of skyrocketing land costs, (30) stringent environmental regulations and shrill public opposition (31) new landfills "in my backyard". "Five years from now," (32) Bruce Waddle. director of the Environmental Protection Agency's municipal-solid-waste program, "we'll have only half the number of landfills operating."
With this grim prospect, new methods are required, all variations on the only four ways available to deal (33) garbage: bury it, burn it, recycle it or don't make as (34) in the first place. What's needed, experts say, is sophisticated (35) fallout, called "integrated waste management" An (36) valuable items are sorted out of the waste stream and turned (37) new products, and the rest are burned cleanly in a furnace that also produces steam to (38) electricity. Only the ash, (39) of the original volume of trash, is then disposed (40) in carefully engineered landfills.