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Middle East and Africa
中東與歐洲
African Rubbish: Plastic bantastic
非洲垃圾：禁塑令
Banning the bag is a small step.
禁止塑料袋只是一小步。
Littering in graveyards is generally frowned upon.
在墓地亂扔垃圾通常會(huì)引起反感。
But at the edge of Kangemi, a slum in Nairobi, Kenya's capital, a patch of land that used to be a final resting place for humans now serves as a rubbish dump.
但是在肯尼亞首都內(nèi)羅畢的一個(gè)名為Kangemi的貧民窟的邊緣地區(qū)，一片曾經(jīng)的長(zhǎng)眠之所現(xiàn)在變成了垃圾場(chǎng)。
A few mangy goats roam around, picking out scraps of food.
臟兮兮的幾只山羊在周圍晃悠找零星的吃的。
Men, too, scrabble around.
人也一樣，四處翻撿垃圾。
“This is where we find our daily bread,” says George Kimani, who collects aluminium cans and plastic bottles and sells them to recyclers.
在垃圾堆里拾鋁罐和塑料瓶然后賣給回收站的喬治·基馬尼說這里是他們每天的口糧來源。
But one thing is not of use, he says: plastic bags.
但他還說有一樣是沒用的——塑料袋。
Left behind by goats and men alike, they form a carpet of green, blue and white on the ochre earth.
人和山羊都不要的塑料袋在這片赭紅色的土地上鋪成綠色、藍(lán)色和白色的一片。
Since their invention in the 1960s, disposable plastic bags have made lives easier for lazy shoppers the world over.
自20世紀(jì)60年代它們被發(fā)明以來，一次性塑料袋使世界各地的懶人購物變得輕而易舉。
But once used, they become a blight.
但一旦使用，它們就變成一顆環(huán)境毒瘤。
This is particularly true in poor countries without good systems for disposing of them.
這并非危言聳聽，尤其是對(duì)于沒有完備系統(tǒng)來處理它們的貧窮國(guó)家來說。
They are not only unsightly.
垃圾袋不僅僅是有礙觀瞻。
Filled with rainwater, they are a boon for malaria-carrying mosquitoes.
它們?cè)谑M雨水之后會(huì)成為攜帶瘧疾的蚊子的溫床；
Dumped in the ocean, they kill fish.
被傾卸在海洋里的話，垃圾袋還會(huì)殺死魚類；
They may take hundreds of years to degrade.
并且它們要花上幾百年才能自然分解。
On March 15th Kenya announced that it will become the second country in Africa to ban them.
3月15日，肯尼亞宣布其將成為非洲第二個(gè)禁止塑料袋的國(guó)家。
It follows Rwanda, a country with a dictatorial obsession with cleanliness, which outlawed them in 2008.
它之前是盧旺達(dá)，這個(gè)對(duì)衛(wèi)生清潔有著專斷式的追求的國(guó)家在2008年宣布塑料袋不合法。
譯文來源考研英語時(shí)事閱讀
