阅读理解
Have you switched off your computer? How about your television? Your video? Your CD player? And even your coffee percolator? Really switched them off, not just pressed the button on some control panel and left your machine with a telltale bright red light warning you that it is ready to jump back to life at your command? Because if you haven't, you are one of the guilty people who are helping to pollute the planet. It doesn't matter if you've joined the neighborhood recycling scheme, conscientiously sorted your garbage and avoided driving to work. You still can't sleep easy while just one of those little red lights is glowing in the dark. The awful truth is that household and office electrical appliances left on stand-by mode are gobbling up energy, even though they are doing absolutely nothing. Some electronic products—such as CD players—can use almost as much energy on stand-by as they do when running. Others may use a lot less, but as your video player spends far more hours on stand-by than playing anything, the wastage soon adds up. In the US alone, idle electronic devices consume enough energy to power cities with the energy needs of Chicago or London—costing consumers around $1 billion a year. Power stations fill the atmosphere with carbon dioxide just to do absolutely nothing. Thoughtless design is partly responsible for the waste. But manufacturers only get away with designing products that waste energy this way because consumers are not sensitive enough to the issue indeed, while recycling has caught the public imagination, reducing waste has attached much less attention. But 'source reduction', as the garbage experts like to call the art of not using what you don't need to use, offers enormous potential for reducing waste of all kinds. With a little intelligent shopping, you can cut waste long before you reach the recycling end of the chain. Packaging remains the big villain. One of the hidden consequences of buying products grown or made all around the world, rather than produced locally, is the huge amount of packaging needed to transport them safely. In the US, a third of the solid waste collected from city homes is packaging. To help cut the waste and encourage intelligent manufacturers the simplest trick is to look for ultra-light packaging. The same arguments apply to the very light but strong plastic bottles that are replacing heavier glass alternatives, thin-walled aluminum cans, and cartons made of composites that wrap up anything drinkable in an ultra-light package. There are hundreds of other tricks you can discuss with colleagues while gathering around the proverbial water cooler—filling up, naturally, your own mug rather than a disposable plastic cup. But you don't need to go as far as one website which tells you how to give your friends unwrapped Christmas presents. There are limits to source correctness.
单选题
From the first two paragraphs, the author implies that ______.
单选题
The waste caused by household and office electrical appliances on stand-by mode seems to ______.
【正确答案】
D
【答案解析】 推断题。本题题意是“由家电和办公电器在待机状态所产生的垃圾似乎……”。参见第五段“...while recycling has caught the public imagination, reducing waste has attached much less attention”。“……回收利用一直受大众关注，而减少浪费却少有人注意。”从此句可以看出，由家用电器及办公设备待机状态造成的浪费还未得到人们足够的重视。所以选D。
单选题
By idle electronic devices, the author means those appliances ______.
【正确答案】
A
【答案解析】 推断题。题意是“idle electronic devices是指……”。参见第四段第一句。作者在前三段一直在说待机状态的家电和办公设备，在第三段第一句提到stand-by mode的电器在消耗能量。第四段第一句说“仅在美国，idle electronic devices消耗的电量就足够芝加哥或伦敦所需……”。因此，可以推断idle electronic devices和appliances left on stand-by mode都表示“待机状态的电器”，所以选A。