中級閱讀模擬測驗　第二十二回

Every Sunday morning a group of neighbors walks along the beach with a large (11) in each hand. In two hours they usually collect forty kilos of (12): bottles, broken toys and old fishing nets. Most of it did not come from the town at all; the sea carries it here from far away. The volunteers do not simply (13) everything at the town's rubbish site. Plastic, glass and metal are sorted and sold, and the money buys gloves for the next walk. The leader says that people who once dropped (14) here now stop and think, because clean (15) change the way we behave.

For three days last winter the city disappeared behind a thick brown (16). Schools closed, and hospitals reported twice the usual number of (17) problems. The mayor acted at once. Old buses were taken off the road, factories were told to cut their (18) by half, and free masks were (19) at every station. Neighbors who had never met before began to share air readings on their phones. Since then the air is clearer, though far from clean. Scientists warn that some birds that once nested here may already be (20) in this valley, and that no law can bring them back.