🚯 Describe a time when you saw a lot of plastic waste (Part 2) + Transcript
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Hello, hello, dear listener, and welcome into IELTS Speaking Part 2, a fresh new topic for you. Describe a time when you saw a lot of plastic waste.

For example, in a park, on the beach, or etc. You should say where and when you saw the plastic waste, why there was a lot of plastic waste, what you did after you saw it, and explain what your thoughts were about this. Rory, hello, do you have a story?

I do. It's a bit sad that this has become such a huge problem that we are now having to talk about it as part of our IELTS test. But I have a story, so at the very least that concern is taken care of. Plastic. Rory, give us your story.

Well, I wasn't very impressed the other day when I was walking through the park near my home. This must have been a couple of weeks ago now. And I was going for my normal morning walk when I was treated to the sight of all this rubbish strewn all over the place. It had been like a mini heatwave the day before and lots of people had descended on the place to soak up the sun.

Evidently, they'd done things like have barbecues, ordered food there and brought their own picnics as well. And some had just up and left their discarded packaging all over the place for me to find the following day.

I'm not sure why they felt they could get away with that, since lots of other people had clearly disposed of their stuff in the bins provided, but some people just left things, and that wasn't great. I wish I could say I did something constructive after I came across all of this, but in all honesty, there's just too much to deal with by myself, so I just had to keep going past it and then complain about it to people after. Eh, sometimes that's all you can do in these situations.

And it did ultimately get cleared up, which was good. I just wish it didn't have to come to that. It all could have been so easily avoided. I suppose it should be obvious now that I wasn't exactly enthralled with the whole situation. People really need to learn to take better care of shared spaces like that and not just leave garbage lying around.

Hopefully in the future, it'll be less of a problem, but I'm not holding out much hope of that happening because this park is quite popular and we've had these kinds of issues in the past, but on this particular occasion, it was particularly bad. I'm not really sure what can be done about it other than to just keep complaining and hoping that the services will...

tidy up, continue to do their job properly. And do you often see much plastic waste? In this place, yes, increasingly so, and in general too, actually. Music

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As you know, we now release all of our premium content for free and it's available for one month. After one month it goes into our super secret archive. To sign up for the archive, click the link in the description below. See you soon! Yay! Thank you, Rory, for your story! So, dear listener, describe a time when you saw a lot of plastic waste. So, you were walking in a park or on the street, on the beach

somewhere in a garden, outside or maybe inside, in a museum for example, and there was a lot of rubbish. So plastic and by plastic waste. What do we mean by plastic waste? Well, just anything plastic that is not essential to the product or that exists after it's been used or consumed. So that could be things like packaging,

I suppose it could also be things like components of products as well. Sometimes you have these things that you can remove from products in order to use them effectively. Yeah, so coffee cups, sunglasses, cosmetics, packaging, all sorts of stuff. Bottles, caps, food containers, etc.

Bags, like plastic bags. Wraps. Wraps, like wrappings that we wrap a product into. So, pretty much any rubbish. Okay, you can also talk about the situation when you saw a lot of rubbish. Rubbish, waste, litter or garbage. And the situation is in the past. So, when you saw it. And you should use the past simple or past perfect.

Rory started his story by saying something like: "When I was walking through the park" "When I was walking through the park" or "When I was walking along the street" or "When I was going home" "I saw a lot of rubbish, a lot of plastic waste" And when was it? A couple of weeks ago, last week, last month? And you can feel free to lie. Just imagine that last week you saw a lot of plastic waste.

I went for my normal morning walk or I was jogging, I was running.

I was walking with my friends. And then I was really annoyed because there was all this rubbish in the place I live. Yeah, and then I saw all this rubbish like all over the place. When rubbish is all over the place, it's just scattered all over. Or strewn. Strewn. Strewn is like thrown. Yeah? Yeah. I suppose. I doubt it was thrown around by the people, but the wind could have done that.

Either way, they should be tidying these things up so this does not happen. Yeah. So, I saw a lot of rubbish thrown all over the place. So, people threw it. Or I saw a lot of rubbish or I saw a lot of plastic waste strewed. Strewed all over the place. So, to strew...

is a verb, to strew, s-t-r-e-w, spread things in an untidy way. So, the rubbish was strewn across the lawn. Or the park was strewn with litter. And you can say, like, I was walking in the park and the place was strewn with litter, with rubbish.

And it was very hot that day, so it was a mini heat wave. And lots of people went to the park to soak up the sun. I thought about that as I left, as I, as the words left my mouth. I was like, that's a bit of a cliche, but it's a fact. Especially in this country, you have to take advantage of these things whenever you can.

Yeah, like when you soak up the sun, you soak up the atmosphere, you kind of enjoy something that's around you. Like I went to the beach to soak up the sun. Or you, dear listener, should soak up everything that we tell you. Yeah. And people had barbecues, they ordered food. So what people did? They brought their own picnics, they had picnics.

And they left a lot of packaging all over the place. So they left a lot of plastic waste. So they left a lot of discarded packaging. You no longer needed discarded food containers. So you just eat your food and then you just throw away the container from your food. So there was a lot of discarded packaging all over the place.

If people throw away the rubbish, they dispose of rubbish. So, some people had disposed of their stuff in the bins. So, garbage bins, rubbish bins are places where you throw rubbish. So, some people disposed of their stuff, of their rubbish in the bins. But others threw everything all over the place.

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Rory, did you start collecting the stuff? No, no, I just passed by and did nothing. Why not, Rory, you know? Well, first of all, it was my morning walk, so it's like I only have 20 minutes to do this and then I need to go and work. And second of all...

It's not my responsibility to clean up after other people. It's their responsibility. So I really feel strongly about this. People should be looking after like shared spaces such as parks and beaches, not just because other people live there, but also because they presumably want to enjoy it in the future as well. So I think they should be a bit more mindful of these things. Yeah.

So, if you see something unexpectedly, you can say that I came across it. So, you are walking in the street, listening to IELTS Speaking for Success podcast, and then like, bam, a lot of rubbish. So, I came across a lot of plastic waste, or I came across a lot of rubbish or litter.

A good structure is I wish I could. So when you express regret, you didn't do something, but you wanted to. I wish I could do something about it, but I didn't do. Or I could have done something constructive about it. Like I could have picked the rubbish. I could have picked it up and put it in the bin, but I didn't do it.

So I could have done it, I could have cleared the rubbish, I could have put it in the bin, but I didn't have time. I could have thrown it away, yeah, could have, I could have done it. So I had to keep going, so kind of I saw it, I had to keep going past it. So when you walk past it, you just walk

And forget about it. And do nothing. It sounds really bad for me. Yeah, and then you complain about the people. You complain about the people who had done it, right? I hate doing that, but like, I have a limited number of hours in the day and I have classes to teach, so I can't be a bin man at the same time.

Ultimately, it got cleared up. So, somebody cleared it up. So, clear up. Clear up the mess.

So, who usually does the job? Who is responsible for clearing up the rubbish? I don't know. Council service workers, perhaps, is probably their technical title. I don't know what you call them in general. They will have different names in different countries. But in general, who cleans the streets? Well, some of them are called street cleaners, but others are not. Sometimes they have a job that...

means they do this and they do other things. So, for example, if you're a street cleaner, all you do is clean the streets. But if you're a service worker, then you might do that one day and then a different day you do something else. So it depends on how your country is managed, to be honest. But you can say like street cleaners. I think the most general term, like street cleaners should do it or...

City Council should be responsible for this. Well, or some kind of neighborhood association, perhaps. But the fact is, there should be someone managing this situation, I feel. About your feelings, dear listener, you can say I was really annoyed, I was irritated.

And Rory nicely said "I wasn't exactly impressed with the whole situation". So it wasn't impressive. And this means that Rory was annoyed. Yes, that's conveyed by the tone of voice. Actually, that might be another thing you can do to improve your pronunciation. Practice sounding angry while saying something pleasant about it. So "I wasn't exactly thrilled" or "I wasn't exactly pleased".

Yeah, I wasn't exactly thrilled with the whole situation. So pretty much like I didn't like it at all. And people shouldn't leave garbage lying around like that. Leave rubbish lying around all over the place. So when rubbish is everywhere. So people shouldn't leave garbage lying around like that.

And hopefully in the future, you can say things about the future, hopefully in the future it will be less of a problem. To be less of a problem. And Rory, do people litter usually where you live? Well, not so much that the place looks like a dump or a garbage tip, but it's still...

Fairly. It's enough to be annoying when you see it. And I feel like once it starts, it only gets worse. Sweet. Thank you very much for listening. We'll get back to you in our next episode about waste and rubbish and plastic use and pollution. Interesting, exciting topics, aren't they, dear listener? See you. Bye. Bye. Bye.

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The 2025 GMC Sierra lineup featuring the Sierra 1500 Heavy Duty and EV. Because true bliss is removing every shadow from every doubt. We are professional grade. Visit GMC.com to learn more. Describe a time when you saw a lot of plastic waste. For example, in a park, on the beach, or etc.

You should say where and when you saw the plastic waste, why there was a lot of plastic waste, what you did after you saw it, and explain what your thoughts were about this. Well, I wasn't very impressed the other day when I was walking through the park near my home. This must have been a couple of weeks ago now. And I was going for my normal morning walk when I was treated to the sight of all this rubbish strewn all over the place.

It had been like a mini heatwave the day before, and lots of people had descended on the place to soak up the sun. Evidently, they'd done things like have barbecues, ordered food there and brought their own picnics as well. And some had just up and left their discarded packaging all over the place for me to find the following day.

I'm not sure why they felt they could get away with that, since lots of other people had clearly disposed of their stuff in the bins provided, but some people just left things, and that wasn't great. I wish I could say I did something constructive after I came across all of this, but in all honesty, there's just too much to deal with by myself, so I just had to keep going past it and then complain about it to people after. Eh, sometimes that's all you can do in these situations.

And it did ultimately get cleared up, which was good. I just wish it didn't have to come to that. It all could have been so easily avoided. I suppose it should be obvious now that I wasn't exactly enthralled with the whole situation. People really need to learn to take better care of shared spaces like that and not just leave garbage lying around.

Hopefully in the future, it'll be less of a problem, but I'm not holding out much hope of that happening because this park is quite popular and we've had these kinds of issues in the past, but on this particular occasion, it was particularly bad. I'm not really sure what can be done about it other than to just keep complaining and hoping that the services will...

tidy up, continue to do their job properly. And do you often see much plastic waste? In this place, yes, increasingly so, and in general too, actually. MUSIC