Verbal Ability & Reading Comprehension (VARC) Test - 29

Read the passage carefully and answer the questions that follow.

Ever since China announced last year that it no longer wanted to be the “world’s garbage dump,” recycling about half of the globe’s plastics and paper products, Western nations have been puzzling over what to do when the ban went into effect. [Britain] is already seeing a buildup of plastic recyclables and has had to pay to have some of it removed. Similar backups have been reported in [USA], Canada, Ireland, Germany and several other European nations, while tons of rubbish is piling up in port cities like Hong Kong...

The European Union, for its part, plans to propose a tax on plastic bags and packaging, citing the China ban and the health of the oceans among other reasons. Those measures might help ease the situation some day, but for now [countries are] faced with growing piles of recyclables and no place to put them. Experts say the immediate response to the crisis may well be to turn to incineration or landfills — both harmful to the environment.

China had been processing at least half of the world’s exports of waste paper, metals and used plastic. Last [year], China notified the World Trade Organization that it intended to ban some imports of trash, saying the action was needed to protect the environment and improve public health. “Large amounts of dirty wastes or even hazardous wastes are mixed in the solid waste that can be used as raw materials,” Beijing wrote to the W.T.O. “This polluted China’s environment seriously.” Chinese officials also complained that much of the recyclable material the country received from overseas had not been properly cleaned or was mixed with non-recyclable materials.

The sudden move has left Western countries scrambling to deal with a buildup of plastic and paper garbage while looking for new markets for the waste... “There may be alternative markets but they’re not ready today,” said Emmanuel Katrakis, the secretary general of the European Recycling Industries’ Confederation in Brussels... Every year, Britain sends China enough recyclables to fill up 10,000 Olympic-size swimming pools. The United States exports more than 13.2 million tons of scrap paper and 1.42 million tons of scrap plastics annually to China – the sixth-largest American export to China.

Katrakis dismissed China’s claims that all imported scrap waste contained high levels of contaminants, and said that Beijing’s thresholds for most types of scrap were “far more demanding” than in Europe or the United States. At the same time, he said, Europe has focused too much on collecting plastic waste and shipping it out, and not enough on encouraging manufacturers to use it in new products.

Too often, he said, manufacturers produce environmentally harmful products and then “pass the buck” to retailers, who in turn pass it to local councils to pick up the tab to sort out the waste for recycling. “What’s happened is that the final link in the supply chain has turned around and said: ‘No, we’re not going to take this poor-quality stuff anymore. Keep it for yourself.’”

Read the passage carefully and answer the questions that follow.

Ever since China announced last year that it no longer wanted to be the “world’s garbage dump,” recycling about half of the globe’s plastics and paper products, Western nations have been puzzling over what to do when the ban went into effect. [Britain] is already seeing a buildup of plastic recyclables and has had to pay to have some of it removed. Similar backups have been reported in [USA], Canada, Ireland, Germany and several other European nations, while tons of rubbish is piling up in port cities like Hong Kong...

The European Union, for its part, plans to propose a tax on plastic bags and packaging, citing the China ban and the health of the oceans among other reasons. Those measures might help ease the situation some day, but for now [countries are] faced with growing piles of recyclables and no place to put them. Experts say the immediate response to the crisis may well be to turn to incineration or landfills — both harmful to the environment.

China had been processing at least half of the world’s exports of waste paper, metals and used plastic. Last [year], China notified the World Trade Organization that it intended to ban some imports of trash, saying the action was needed to protect the environment and improve public health. “Large amounts of dirty wastes or even hazardous wastes are mixed in the solid waste that can be used as raw materials,” Beijing wrote to the W.T.O. “This polluted China’s environment seriously.” Chinese officials also complained that much of the recyclable material the country received from overseas had not been properly cleaned or was mixed with non-recyclable materials.

The sudden move has left Western countries scrambling to deal with a buildup of plastic and paper garbage while looking for new markets for the waste... “There may be alternative markets but they’re not ready today,” said Emmanuel Katrakis, the secretary general of the European Recycling Industries’ Confederation in Brussels... Every year, Britain sends China enough recyclables to fill up 10,000 Olympic-size swimming pools. The United States exports more than 13.2 million tons of scrap paper and 1.42 million tons of scrap plastics annually to China – the sixth-largest American export to China.

Katrakis dismissed China’s claims that all imported scrap waste contained high levels of contaminants, and said that Beijing’s thresholds for most types of scrap were “far more demanding” than in Europe or the United States. At the same time, he said, Europe has focused too much on collecting plastic waste and shipping it out, and not enough on encouraging manufacturers to use it in new products.

Too often, he said, manufacturers produce environmentally harmful products and then “pass the buck” to retailers, who in turn pass it to local councils to pick up the tab to sort out the waste for recycling. “What’s happened is that the final link in the supply chain has turned around and said: ‘No, we’re not going to take this poor-quality stuff anymore. Keep it for yourself.’”

Read the passage carefully and answer the questions that follow.

Ever since China announced last year that it no longer wanted to be the “world’s garbage dump,” recycling about half of the globe’s plastics and paper products, Western nations have been puzzling over what to do when the ban went into effect. [Britain] is already seeing a buildup of plastic recyclables and has had to pay to have some of it removed. Similar backups have been reported in [USA], Canada, Ireland, Germany and several other European nations, while tons of rubbish is piling up in port cities like Hong Kong...

The European Union, for its part, plans to propose a tax on plastic bags and packaging, citing the China ban and the health of the oceans among other reasons. Those measures might help ease the situation some day, but for now [countries are] faced with growing piles of recyclables and no place to put them. Experts say the immediate response to the crisis may well be to turn to incineration or landfills — both harmful to the environment.

China had been processing at least half of the world’s exports of waste paper, metals and used plastic. Last [year], China notified the World Trade Organization that it intended to ban some imports of trash, saying the action was needed to protect the environment and improve public health. “Large amounts of dirty wastes or even hazardous wastes are mixed in the solid waste that can be used as raw materials,” Beijing wrote to the W.T.O. “This polluted China’s environment seriously.” Chinese officials also complained that much of the recyclable material the country received from overseas had not been properly cleaned or was mixed with non-recyclable materials.

The sudden move has left Western countries scrambling to deal with a buildup of plastic and paper garbage while looking for new markets for the waste... “There may be alternative markets but they’re not ready today,” said Emmanuel Katrakis, the secretary general of the European Recycling Industries’ Confederation in Brussels... Every year, Britain sends China enough recyclables to fill up 10,000 Olympic-size swimming pools. The United States exports more than 13.2 million tons of scrap paper and 1.42 million tons of scrap plastics annually to China – the sixth-largest American export to China.

Katrakis dismissed China’s claims that all imported scrap waste contained high levels of contaminants, and said that Beijing’s thresholds for most types of scrap were “far more demanding” than in Europe or the United States. At the same time, he said, Europe has focused too much on collecting plastic waste and shipping it out, and not enough on encouraging manufacturers to use it in new products.

Too often, he said, manufacturers produce environmentally harmful products and then “pass the buck” to retailers, who in turn pass it to local councils to pick up the tab to sort out the waste for recycling. “What’s happened is that the final link in the supply chain has turned around and said: ‘No, we’re not going to take this poor-quality stuff anymore. Keep it for yourself.’”

Read the passage carefully and answer the questions that follow.

In the midst of today’s cost of living crisis, many people who are critical of the idea of economic growth see an opportunity... Since the same system is, in their view, also responsible for causing climate change, moving away from it and curbing the economic growth on which it turns will help kill two birds with one stone.

Arguments like these recall and are directly influenced by a famous scientific report from 50 years ago called Limits to Growth [which] warned of an “overshoot and collapse” of the global economy within 100 years. The researchers forecast that this decline would be caused by exponential growth in populations, industrialisation, pollution, food production and resource depletion. The answer, they said, was to move to a state of economic and ecological stability that would be sustainable far into the future.

When the oil crisis of October 1973 to March 1974 saw oil prices quadrupling, it was seen as vindicating the report’s prediction of a dramatic surge in the price of oil... Yet contrary to the predictions in the Limits report, the oil shock was not caused by resource scarcity but by geopolitics. The Saudis and oil-supplier cartel OPEC had imposed an oil embargo on the west to protest the US arming Israel in its wars against Syria and Egypt...

Not only did the writers of the Limits report predict a spike in oil prices for the wrong reasons, they also failed to consider how the market would respond. Higher prices reduced demand and incentivized energy efficient investment and oil exploration, with major new reserves being identified. Growth has not been constrained by a lack of resources, partly because technological advances enable us to generate more from less, and partly because of market forces. When a product or commodity becomes more expensive, people either use less of it or switch to an alternative...

Both in the 1970s and today, one of the main issues is a fundamental misunderstanding of what economic growth is and what drives it. It is seen as being quantity driven, in the sense that degrowthers think there is an insatiable demand for more of the same, which will eventually have “devastating consequences for the living world”. But economic growth is more about quality than quantity. It’s not just about producing more cars, for example, but about making them more fuel efficient or electric. This in turn creates demand for different resources, such as lithium for batteries.

Or to give another example of how economists view growth, one important study looked at how the price of a unit of light fell over time. This was because as technology shifted from candles to modern light bulbs, the cost of production in terms of hours worked fell dramatically.

Yet in another respect, the degrowthers are entirely right... Pollution has indeed become a bigger issue than resource constraints... After the Limits thesis, economists began incorporating the idea of finite resources more explicitly into models of economic growth. This formed the basis of the economic approach to sustainable development, which says that you achieve intergenerational equity by reinvesting the proceeds from finite resources into other assets like buildings, machines or tools.

For example, if USD1 of oil is extracted from the ground, USD1 should be reinvested elsewhere. Though still far from universally adopted, some oil- producing nations such as Norway do this.

Read the passage carefully and answer the questions that follow.

In the midst of today’s cost of living crisis, many people who are critical of the idea of economic growth see an opportunity... Since the same system is, in their view, also responsible for causing climate change, moving away from it and curbing the economic growth on which it turns will help kill two birds with one stone.

Arguments like these recall and are directly influenced by a famous scientific report from 50 years ago called Limits to Growth [which] warned of an “overshoot and collapse” of the global economy within 100 years. The researchers forecast that this decline would be caused by exponential growth in populations, industrialisation, pollution, food production and resource depletion. The answer, they said, was to move to a state of economic and ecological stability that would be sustainable far into the future.

When the oil crisis of October 1973 to March 1974 saw oil prices quadrupling, it was seen as vindicating the report’s prediction of a dramatic surge in the price of oil... Yet contrary to the predictions in the Limits report, the oil shock was not caused by resource scarcity but by geopolitics. The Saudis and oil-supplier cartel OPEC had imposed an oil embargo on the west to protest the US arming Israel in its wars against Syria and Egypt...

Not only did the writers of the Limits report predict a spike in oil prices for the wrong reasons, they also failed to consider how the market would respond. Higher prices reduced demand and incentivized energy efficient investment and oil exploration, with major new reserves being identified. Growth has not been constrained by a lack of resources, partly because technological advances enable us to generate more from less, and partly because of market forces. When a product or commodity becomes more expensive, people either use less of it or switch to an alternative...

Both in the 1970s and today, one of the main issues is a fundamental misunderstanding of what economic growth is and what drives it. It is seen as being quantity driven, in the sense that degrowthers think there is an insatiable demand for more of the same, which will eventually have “devastating consequences for the living world”. But economic growth is more about quality than quantity. It’s not just about producing more cars, for example, but about making them more fuel efficient or electric. This in turn creates demand for different resources, such as lithium for batteries.

Or to give another example of how economists view growth, one important study looked at how the price of a unit of light fell over time. This was because as technology shifted from candles to modern light bulbs, the cost of production in terms of hours worked fell dramatically.

Yet in another respect, the degrowthers are entirely right... Pollution has indeed become a bigger issue than resource constraints... After the Limits thesis, economists began incorporating the idea of finite resources more explicitly into models of economic growth. This formed the basis of the economic approach to sustainable development, which says that you achieve intergenerational equity by reinvesting the proceeds from finite resources into other assets like buildings, machines or tools.

For example, if USD1 of oil is extracted from the ground, USD1 should be reinvested elsewhere. Though still far from universally adopted, some oil- producing nations such as Norway do this.

Read the passage carefully and answer the questions that follow.

In the midst of today’s cost of living crisis, many people who are critical of the idea of economic growth see an opportunity... Since the same system is, in their view, also responsible for causing climate change, moving away from it and curbing the economic growth on which it turns will help kill two birds with one stone.

Arguments like these recall and are directly influenced by a famous scientific report from 50 years ago called Limits to Growth [which] warned of an “overshoot and collapse” of the global economy within 100 years. The researchers forecast that this decline would be caused by exponential growth in populations, industrialisation, pollution, food production and resource depletion. The answer, they said, was to move to a state of economic and ecological stability that would be sustainable far into the future.

When the oil crisis of October 1973 to March 1974 saw oil prices quadrupling, it was seen as vindicating the report’s prediction of a dramatic surge in the price of oil... Yet contrary to the predictions in the Limits report, the oil shock was not caused by resource scarcity but by geopolitics. The Saudis and oil-supplier cartel OPEC had imposed an oil embargo on the west to protest the US arming Israel in its wars against Syria and Egypt...

Not only did the writers of the Limits report predict a spike in oil prices for the wrong reasons, they also failed to consider how the market would respond. Higher prices reduced demand and incentivized energy efficient investment and oil exploration, with major new reserves being identified. Growth has not been constrained by a lack of resources, partly because technological advances enable us to generate more from less, and partly because of market forces. When a product or commodity becomes more expensive, people either use less of it or switch to an alternative...

Both in the 1970s and today, one of the main issues is a fundamental misunderstanding of what economic growth is and what drives it. It is seen as being quantity driven, in the sense that degrowthers think there is an insatiable demand for more of the same, which will eventually have “devastating consequences for the living world”. But economic growth is more about quality than quantity. It’s not just about producing more cars, for example, but about making them more fuel efficient or electric. This in turn creates demand for different resources, such as lithium for batteries.

Or to give another example of how economists view growth, one important study looked at how the price of a unit of light fell over time. This was because as technology shifted from candles to modern light bulbs, the cost of production in terms of hours worked fell dramatically.

Yet in another respect, the degrowthers are entirely right... Pollution has indeed become a bigger issue than resource constraints... After the Limits thesis, economists began incorporating the idea of finite resources more explicitly into models of economic growth. This formed the basis of the economic approach to sustainable development, which says that you achieve intergenerational equity by reinvesting the proceeds from finite resources into other assets like buildings, machines or tools.

For example, if USD1 of oil is extracted from the ground, USD1 should be reinvested elsewhere. Though still far from universally adopted, some oil- producing nations such as Norway do this.

Read the passage carefully and answer the questions that follow.

In the midst of today’s cost of living crisis, many people who are critical of the idea of economic growth see an opportunity... Since the same system is, in their view, also responsible for causing climate change, moving away from it and curbing the economic growth on which it turns will help kill two birds with one stone.

Arguments like these recall and are directly influenced by a famous scientific report from 50 years ago called Limits to Growth [which] warned of an “overshoot and collapse” of the global economy within 100 years. The researchers forecast that this decline would be caused by exponential growth in populations, industrialisation, pollution, food production and resource depletion. The answer, they said, was to move to a state of economic and ecological stability that would be sustainable far into the future.

When the oil crisis of October 1973 to March 1974 saw oil prices quadrupling, it was seen as vindicating the report’s prediction of a dramatic surge in the price of oil... Yet contrary to the predictions in the Limits report, the oil shock was not caused by resource scarcity but by geopolitics. The Saudis and oil-supplier cartel OPEC had imposed an oil embargo on the west to protest the US arming Israel in its wars against Syria and Egypt...

Not only did the writers of the Limits report predict a spike in oil prices for the wrong reasons, they also failed to consider how the market would respond. Higher prices reduced demand and incentivized energy efficient investment and oil exploration, with major new reserves being identified. Growth has not been constrained by a lack of resources, partly because technological advances enable us to generate more from less, and partly because of market forces. When a product or commodity becomes more expensive, people either use less of it or switch to an alternative...

Both in the 1970s and today, one of the main issues is a fundamental misunderstanding of what economic growth is and what drives it. It is seen as being quantity driven, in the sense that degrowthers think there is an insatiable demand for more of the same, which will eventually have “devastating consequences for the living world”. But economic growth is more about quality than quantity. It’s not just about producing more cars, for example, but about making them more fuel efficient or electric. This in turn creates demand for different resources, such as lithium for batteries.

Or to give another example of how economists view growth, one important study looked at how the price of a unit of light fell over time. This was because as technology shifted from candles to modern light bulbs, the cost of production in terms of hours worked fell dramatically.

Yet in another respect, the degrowthers are entirely right... Pollution has indeed become a bigger issue than resource constraints... After the Limits thesis, economists began incorporating the idea of finite resources more explicitly into models of economic growth. This formed the basis of the economic approach to sustainable development, which says that you achieve intergenerational equity by reinvesting the proceeds from finite resources into other assets like buildings, machines or tools.

For example, if USD1 of oil is extracted from the ground, USD1 should be reinvested elsewhere. Though still far from universally adopted, some oil- producing nations such as Norway do this.

Read the passage carefully and answer the questions that follow.

When most organizations try to increase their innovation efforts, they always seem to start from the same assumption: “we need more ideas.” They’ll start talking about the need to “think outside the box” or “blue sky” thinking in order to find a few ideas that can turn into viable new products or systems. However, in most organizations, innovation isn’t hampered by a lack of ideas, but rather a lack of noticing the good ideas already there.

It’s not an idea problem; it’s a recognition problem. Consider some well-known examples from history. Kodak’s research laboratory invented the first digital camera in 1975 but didn’t pursue it. Instead they paid virtually no attention as Sony developed a different prototype and stole the future of digital photography out from underneath them. Xerox developed the first personal computer, but didn’t invest enough in the technology and allowed Steve Jobs and Apple to snatch the opportunity away...

These [examples] actually reflect a bias we all share — a bias against new and creative ideas when we’re faced with even small amounts of uncertainty. That’s the implications of a study published last year by a team of researchers led by Wharton’s Jennifer Mueller. The research team divided participants into two groups and created a small level of uncertainty in one group by telling them they would be eligible for additional payment based on a random lottery of participants... It was hardly an earth-shattering proposition, but it was still enough to yield some feelings of uncertainty within the group.

The participants were then given two tests. The first test was designed to gauge their implicit perceptions about creativity and practicality... The second test was designed to explicitly survey their feelings toward new, creative ideas... The researchers found that those exposed to a small amount of uncertainty said they valued creativity, but actually favored [practicality over creativity.] In a follow-up experiment, participants in the uncertainty condition were even presented a prototype for an innovative new running shoe and rated it as significantly less viable than the control group.

If such a negative bias against creativity is present in times of uncertainty, it might explain why so many notable innovations were initially rejected... The ideas that could keep company alive are being killed too quickly.

One possible solution to this “idea killing” problem is to change the structure ideas have to move through. Instead of using the traditional hierarchy to find and approve ideas, the approval process could be spread across the whole organization. That’s the approach Rite- Solutions has taken for almost a decade. Rite-Solutions has set up an “idea market” on their internal website where anyone can post an idea. Every employee is also given USD10,000 in virtual currency to “invest” in ideas. In addition to the investment, employees also volunteer to work on project ideas they support. If an idea gathers enough support, the project is approved and everyone who supported it is given a share of the profits from the project. In just a few years, the program has already produced huge gains for the company, from small incremental changes to products in whole new industries... More important than the immediate revenue, the idea market has created a culture where new ideas are recognized and developed throughout the entire company, a democratization of recognition.