Lesson 60 Vocabulary
English word English Definition English Example sentence
1 to compost ~ to turn old food and material into dirt I like to compost my food scraps to make more dirt for my garden.
2 a tip a place that garbage is dumped There was a tip near my house, and I could always smell the garbage.
3 to be recyclable of a product, able to be turned into another product at the end of its life Steel cans and plastic bottles are recyclable.
4 to reuse ~ to use something that was supposed to be disposable two or more times I like to reuse plastic bags; you can use them many times before they break.
5 to reduce ~ to decrease the amount of something I reduced the amount of garbage I produced by recycling all of my bottles and cans.
6 to incinerate ~ to burn something at a high temperature Lacking space in a dump or landfill, the city decided to incinerate its waste.
7 an incinerator a special building or chamber used for burning things at high temperature Modern incinerators produce nothing but heat and fine ash; no smoke or toxic fumes.
8 to be burnable of a thing, to be able to catch on fire Paper is burnable, but cans are not.
9 to be green of a product, to have been produced without harming the environment It was green lumber, harvested from sustainable forests.
10 to dispose of ~ to throw something away It is hard to dispose of large appliances in a big city.
11 sustainability the state of being able to continue indefinitely without decline Converting public buses to run on solar power is a way a city can move toward sustainability.
12 a greenhouse a special glass or plastic house which traps heat and enables plants to grow Tomatoes can be grown in a greenhouse even in winter.
13 to be organic of a crop, to be grown without using poisons to kill bugs or weeds Organic tomatoes are expensive, but they are much healthier than other tomatoes.
14 to be remade into ~ of a product, to be destroyed and re-created as something else The old plastic bottles were melted down and remade into plastic rope.
15 a trash compactor a device that presses down trash and makes it smaller The trash compactor did a great job smashing the trash.
16 a waste receptacle the general word for any kind of garbage or trash can There were many waste receptacles on the beach.
17 a garbage disposal a device that uses a spinning blade to chop up food scraps I put the old potatoes in the garbage disposal.
18 to be incombustible to be unable to catch on fire Glass is incombustible, but paper can burn easily.
19 to be combustible to be able to catch on fire Paper is very combustible so it is easy to dispose of.
20 to be biodegradable to be able to disappear naturally over the course of months or years Paper plates are biodegradable; eventually, they will turn into dirt.
21 to break down to fall apart into smaller and smaller pieces It took thousands of years for the plastic bottle to break down.