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CELPIP Practice Reading: Reading for Information ID: #60162 Easy Community composting programs

Read the following passage.

A. Community composting programs collect food scraps and yard waste so that they become compost instead of being buried in a landfill. Food and other material that breaks down naturally makes up about 40 per cent of household waste in Canada. Keeping it out of landfills cuts emissions of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, and reduces the polluted liquid that forms inside landfills. Programs gather the material in several ways, including curbside pickup, drop-off depots and community collection sites, and the finished compost returns organic matter to the soil.

B. Toronto's Green Bin program shows how collection works in a large city. It collects from about 460,000 houses and also serves most apartment and condo buildings, schools and City-owned buildings. Every kind of food waste is accepted, along with soiled paper towels, pet waste and diapers. Residents may line their kitchen containers with any plastic bag, such as a grocery or milk bag. They are asked to remove stickers, twist ties and elastic bands from produce, because too much plastic and other contaminants can lower the quality of the compost.

C. At a processing plant, machines first pull out plastic bags and other contaminants. The remaining material spends about two weeks in anaerobic digesters, where it is broken down into biogas and digester solids. Toronto is working to upgrade the biogas into renewable natural gas that can help power city vehicles. The solids are then mixed with yard waste and composted outdoors for several months, and the heat this produces destroys harmful bacteria. The finished compost is tested against Ontario standards, and some of it is given to residents for free at Community Environment Days.

D. Governments also use rules to keep organic waste out of landfills. Nova Scotia bans compostable organic material, including food waste, yard waste and soiled paper, from its disposal sites. In Halifax, businesses such as restaurants and apartment buildings must have sorting programs and containers for organic material. Statistics Canada's 2021 Households and the Environment Survey found that about 65 per cent of households composted kitchen waste. Only 49 per cent of households in apartments and flats did so, compared with 72 per cent in single-detached houses. Rates were highest in Prince Edward Island, at 96 per cent, and Nova Scotia, at 91 per cent.

E. Not given in any of the above paragraphs.

Decide which paragraph, A to D, has the information given in each statement below. Select E if the information is not given in any of the paragraphs.

- 1.
People are asked to peel labels off fruit and vegetables before putting them out.

- 2.
Rising temperatures during the months of decay kill dangerous germs.

- 3.
The Green Bin service in Toronto began in the early 1990s.

- 4.
Halifax requires companies, including owners of large residential buildings, to separate out organic waste.

- 5.
Across Canada, items that rot away naturally form about two fifths of what homes discard.

- 6.
Among households in multi-unit buildings, fewer than half turned their leftovers into compost.

- 7.
An ordinary shopping bag may go inside the indoor food bucket.

- 8.
Gas released as leftovers break down may help run municipal trucks and cars.

- 9.
Volunteers hand out the free compost at the community events.

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