第二步：精读重点段落

（Tips: 双击文中单词可以查释义并加入你的生词本哦）

Food delivery is a booming business. Waste is piling up, too

[1] THREE couriers in hard helmets cram into an office lift in Beijing—one clad in red, one in yellow and one in blue. The trio are dispatching food that was purchased online through China’s most popular meal-ordering firms, which fill urban roads every midday with their colourful delivery people on electric bicycles. Delivery fees as low as three yuan ($0.46) have helped to transform urban lunch-hours. But the booming business is also fuelling concerns about everything from waste to the abuse of workers.

• courier [ˈkʊriɚ, ˈkə:-, ˈkʌr-]  n.导游;（传递信息或重要文件的）信使;通讯员
• clad [klæd]  adj.覆盖的;穿衣的 v.穿（衣）( clothe的过去式和过去分词)
• trio [ˈtri:oʊ]  n.三重奏;三人一组;三重奏[三重唱]乐曲;（小步舞曲、谐谑曲等的）中段

[2] Such services—which enable users of a single site to order food from a swathe of local restaurants—are expanding around the world. But in China the industry is on a tear. By the end of June, the number of registered users had risen to 295m, 40% more than at the end of last year, according to government analysts. The value of meals bought online was about $25bn in 2016 and could rise to around $36bn by the end of next year, says iiMedia, a research firm. The market leaders are Meituan and Ele.me. Both still make losses in food delivery, but they have backing from Tencent and Alibaba respectively—tech giants eager to find ways of pushing customers to their dueling online payment systems.

• swathe [swɑð, swɔð, sweð]  vt.用布裹，缠;包裹或压缩n.包装品

[3] Such businesses first began to take off in student dormitories. These days young office-workers are by far the biggest market. But there is much hand-wringing about the consequences of their popularity. Officials say the couriers threaten road safety. They ride electric bikes which are cheap, need no licence and are handy in cities like Beijing that restrict the use of motorcycles. Delivery people often mount pavements or drive against the flow of traffic to maximize earnings during the lunchtime rush. Last month officials in Nanjing said meal delivery bikes in the eastern city had been involved in more than 3,000 accidents in the first six months of the year. In one district of Shanghai police have introduced a penalty-points system. They order those who acquire a certain number of points to perform community service. The police can ask couriers’ employers to fire them.

• hand-wringing束手无策

[5] Most hotly debated of late is the impact the business is having on the environment. Each day about 65m meal-containers are discarded, by one estimate.

[6] There would be much less reason to worry about the mountains of waste if households and local governments did a better job of keeping recyclables separate from gunk. This year the central government ordered 46 cities to come up with new systems for sorting rubbish, which it talks of making mandatory by 2020. That is progress, but only if it is unwavering: over the years officials have found several similar campaigns all too easy to throw out.

• recyclable [ˌri:ˈsaɪkləbl]  adj.可循环再用的
• mandatory [ˈmændətɔ:ri]  adj.强制的;命令的;受委托的n.受托者

（Tips: 双击文中单词可以查释义并加入你的生词本哦）

Recycling — Quick and dirty

Food delivery is a booming business. Waste is piling up, too

[1] THREE couriers in hard helmets cram into an office lift in Beijing—one clad in red, one in yellow and one in blue. The trio are dispatching food that was purchased online through China’s most popular meal-ordering firms, which fill urban roads every midday with their colourful delivery people on electric bicycles. Delivery fees as low as three yuan ($0.46) have helped to transform urban lunch-hours. But the booming business is also fuelling concerns about everything from waste to the abuse of workers.

• courier [ˈkʊriɚ, ˈkə:-, ˈkʌr-]  n.导游;（传递信息或重要文件的）信使;通讯员
• clad [klæd]  adj.覆盖的;穿衣的 v.穿（衣）( clothe的过去式和过去分词)
• trio [ˈtri:oʊ]  n.三重奏;三人一组;三重奏[三重唱]乐曲;（小步舞曲、谐谑曲等的）中段

[2] Such services—which enable users of a single site to order food from a swathe of local restaurants—are expanding around the world. But in China the industry is on a tear. By the end of June, the number of registered users had risen to 295m, 40% more than at the end of last year, according to government analysts. The value of meals bought online was about $25bn in 2016 and could rise to around $36bn by the end of next year, says iiMedia, a research firm. The market leaders are Meituan and Ele.me. Both still make losses in food delivery, but they have backing from Tencent and Alibaba respectively—tech giants eager to find ways of pushing customers to their dueling online payment systems.

• swathe [swɑð, swɔð, sweð]  vt.用布裹，缠;包裹或压缩n.包装品

[3] Such businesses first began to take off in student dormitories. These days young office-workers are by far the biggest market. But there is much hand-wringing about the consequences of their popularity. Officials say the couriers threaten road safety. They ride electric bikes which are cheap, need no licence and are handy in cities like Beijing that restrict the use of motorcycles. Delivery people often mount pavements or drive against the flow of traffic to maximize earnings during the lunchtime rush. Last month officials in Nanjing said meal delivery bikes in the eastern city had been involved in more than 3,000 accidents in the first six months of the year. In one district of Shanghai police have introduced a penalty-points system. They order those who acquire a certain number of points to perform community service. The police can ask couriers’ employers to fire them.

• hand-wringing束手无策

[4] Another worry is the welfare of delivery people, many of whom are migrants from the countryside. In several ways they have it easier than other types of courier: food boxes are easier to handle than bulky parcels, and the recipients are always there. But China Labour Bulletin, an NGO in Hong Kong, says meal deliverers have been staging growing numbers of protests about poor treatment by their employers (usually subcontractors), including wages paid late. Linking their pay to customer ratings has also made it easy for customers to demand more of them than they should: the purchase of groceries en route to their destinations, for example, or the disposal of household rubbish.

• parcel [ˈpɑ:rsl]  n.包袱，包裹;（土地的）一块;一批，一群;（货物的）一宗

[5] Most hotly debated of late is the impact the business is having on the environment. Each day about 65m meal-containers are discarded, by one estimate. Campaigners object to the unwanted cutlery, napkins and chopsticks that restaurants selling through online platforms habitually bundle with orders. The Green Volunteer League of Chongqing, a Chinese NGO, says that food-delivery sites have not made it easy enough for customers to refuse such sundries (the big companies deny this). In September a court in Beijing agreed to examine whether they have violated consumers’ rights.

• cutlery [ˈkʌtləri]  n.刀具，刀叉;刀剑制造业
• sundry [ˈsʌndri]  adj.各式各样的;杂多的

[6] There would be much less reason to worry about the mountains of waste if households and local governments did a better job of keeping recyclables separate from gunk. This year the central government ordered 46 cities to come up with new systems for sorting rubbish, which it talks of making mandatory by 2020. That is progress, but only if it is unwavering: over the years officials have found several similar campaigns all too easy to throw out.

• recyclable [ˌri:ˈsaɪkləbl]  adj.可循环再用的
• mandatory [ˈmændətɔ:ri]  adj.强制的;命令的;受委托的n.受托者