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2013年英语四六级外刊阅读练习：垃圾成堆 本篇阅读材料我们对垃圾的爱垃圾成堆选自《经济学人》(原文标题：Our love of garbage Rubbish heaps 2012.4.14)。如果大家觉得比较简单，就当作英语四级泛读材料了解了解，认识几个新单词或新表达方式也不错。如果大家觉得这些材料理解上有难度，不妨当做挑战自己的拔高训练，希望大家都有进步。 ALTHOUGH it is the buried tombs and the lost cities that get all the press， one of the most valuable things that an archaeologist can dig up is rubbish. Palace murals and heroic statues record the sanitised， official version of history， but a societys garbage tells the true story of how its members lived. With that thought in mind， archaeologists of the future are in for a treat. The industrial societies of the worlds developed countries are the most wasteful ever， their spoor turning up in every corner of the Earth. Almost by definition， waste is something that most people prefer not to think too much about. But Edward Humes， an American journalist， is fascinated by the stuff. Garbology is his attempt to make sense of our historically unprecedented readiness to throw things away. The book begins at the Puente Hills landfill， an artificial mountain near Los Angeles. It is the biggest dump in America， 30 years old， 150 metres high and containing 130m tonnes of rubbish within a 700-acre footprint. If it were a building， it would be among the 20 tallest in the city. Building a rubbish pile is， it turns out， surprisingly high-tech. The mountain is a giant， putrid layer-cake， with dozens of strata of rubbish separated by soil and plastic liners designed to contain the brew of noxious chemicals that would otherwise leach into groundwater. The rot produces methane， which is collected via a network of pipes that penetrate the mountain， and burned to produce electricity. | 
