Two students, James and Nina, discussing their project on single-use
IELTS Listening — IELTS Practice Originals, Listening Practice Test 4, Section 3
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{# Shown in full, as the review screen does after a sitting: it is the text a searcher is looking for, and hiding it would leave this page with nothing on it but a heading. #}Section 3. You will hear two students, James and Nina, discussing their project on single-use plastic on campus with their tutor. First, you have some time to look at questions 21 to 24.
Now listen carefully and answer questions 21 to 24.
TUTOR: James, Nina, let's really dig into your plastic project. You leaned on a published study, didn't you?
NINA: Yes, there was one big university study we kept returning to. Its central claim was striking, that giving people a small discount for bringing a reusable cup or container cuts waste far more effectively than charging them a penalty does. A carrot beats a stick, essentially. That shaped how we framed everything.
TUTOR: And did your own findings back that up?
JAMES: Broadly, yes, although, and Nina will roll her eyes here, I'm not as sold on it as she is. She's convinced discounts on their own will do the job. I think you also have to physically remove the throwaway option, otherwise people happily take the discount and then carry on exactly as before. We're not far apart, but we do genuinely disagree on that.
NINA: We do. I'd trust a reward to change behaviour; James wants to force it. It's the one thing we argue about.
TUTOR: A productive disagreement. Now, you measured the waste in two different ways, tell me about that.
Before you hear the rest of the discussion, you have some time to look at questions 25 to 30.
JAMES: We started by weighing what came out of the bins each day. It was a nightmare, honestly, the scales we'd borrowed were unreliable and kept drifting, and, frankly, sorting through bins of old coffee cups was a thoroughly unpleasant job. So we abandoned that and switched to simply counting the items as they were sold at the tills. It was slower, but far more accurate, and much less grim.
TUTOR: So counting won out over weighing. Now, you examined four types of plastic. What did you conclude about each? Bottles first.
NINA: Bottles were the easiest of all to cut. The moment the university put in a few more water fountains, sales of bottled water dropped like a stone.
TUTOR: The coffee cups?
JAMES: Those were the hardest. Everyone assumes a paper coffee cup can be recycled, but it can't, there's a thin plastic coating inside that makes recycling impossible.
TUTOR: The takeaway food containers?
NINA: They were the real shock, by a very long way the single largest source of waste, far more than we had ever expected.
TUTOR: And lastly, the plastic bags?
JAMES: Barely worth mentioning any more, the campus shop had already switched over to paper bags, so that problem had more or less solved itself.
TUTOR: Excellent, a very clear structure for the results.
That is the end of Section 3. You now have some time to check your answers.