Real Easy English: Talking about waste
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Hello and welcome to Real Easy English. In this podcast we have real conversations in easy English to help you learn. I'm Neil. And I'm Beth. Did you know you can watch a video of this podcast on our website? Go to bbclearningenglish.com.

Hi Beth, how are you today? I'm very good, thank you. Neil, how are you? I'm very good. What are we talking about? Well, today we are talking about waste. So that's what we call things that we don't want anymore, like rubbish or things that we've used and we now don't need them. So, for example, after I've eaten some crisps as a snack, the packet is rubbish, it's waste. Mm-hmm.

Are you good at dealing with waste? I think so. I mean, at home we recycle. We can recycle glass, plastic, metal, card, all the usual things that we recycle here in the UK. What about you? Yeah, I do what I'm supposed to do. So we have a separate bin for different things, for plastic and for glass and for paper and for food. Yeah.

When I was a kid, everything went in the same bin. Really? Yeah. And now that seems really crazy and really bad. Yeah. So I think we are better now at dealing with waste, but probably there's more things we can do.

Yeah, I would think so. Yeah. Something that I do as well is when I'm in a supermarket, I try to not buy fruit and veg that's wrapped in plastic. I'll always try and buy the individual products like apples on their own or, you know, a courgette. You don't need a courgette that's wrapped in plastic. Well, that's a good idea. But sometimes it's actually quite difficult to find things that...

aren't covered in plastic because we rely on plastic so much. Yeah, I know that is true. You know what people do these days, which is great that they didn't used to do? Carry reusable water bottles. That's true. Almost everybody carries a bottle. And just a few years ago, people bought plastic bottles of...

Of water all the time. Yeah. I remember when I was teaching in a classroom and I'd sometimes have students, they would come to London from all over the world and every day they would go to a supermarket and buy a plastic bottle. And I used to say sometimes, you know, buy a reusable one and then you're not using this plastic all the time. Yeah. We have a word for that, don't we? Single use plastic. Yep.

So we have to try and avoid single-use plastics. What about water? So water waste. I really like having a bath just to relax, but sometimes I feel really guilty about it because it's using up quite a lot of water. Yeah. I prefer showers, which is good because they use less water. So, Beth, is there anything that you are planning to do to cut down further on the waste that you create?

I should probably have fewer baths. I mean, I maybe have one a week. So, I mean, I shower too, of course. But maybe I could have a bath less often, find other ways of relaxing which are less wasteful. What about you? Anything you want to cut back on? Yeah, I think we talked about single-use plastic. You know, cling film, right?

The very thin, like, sheets of plastic that you wrap food in. Yeah. I always feel bad when I use that stuff. But it's also really convenient and does its job well, keeping a sandwich together or whatever. But I don't like it. So I want to cut down on my use of cling film. ♪

Let's recap the vocabulary we heard in this conversation. We had waste. Waste is things that are unwanted, like rubbish. And we can also describe something as a waste when someone uses something they don't need to or they throw something away after not using it. So, for example, when my kids don't finish their dinner, that's a waste.

We heard single-use plastics. These are plastic materials that we use once and then throw away. So, for example, food wrappers and shopping bags. We heard recycle, which means to collect rubbish in order to make materials that can be used again. We can also describe something as recyclable. It means it can be recycled, it can be used again.

And we had some common phrasal verbs that we use when talking about the environment. So we had 'rely on', which means 'need something in order to function'. For example, we rely on plastic a lot in our daily lives. We can also say 'cut down on', which means to reduce something. And we also hear 'cut back on'. So for example, I want to cut back on single-use plastic.

That's it for this episode of Real Easy English. If you want to learn more phrasal verbs about the environment, then Georgie has made a whole video on this. You'll find the link in the notes below. And next time on Real Easy English, we'll be talking about confidence. See you then. Bye!