In the 13th century, the famous Italian traveler, Marco Polo, traveled a long way to China. One of the things he discovered was that the Chinese used paper money. In western countries, people did not use paper money until the 15th century. However, people in China began to use paper money in the 11th century.
A Chinese man called Cai Lun invented paper almost 2,000 years ago. He made it from wood. He took the wood from trees and made it into paper. He then put these pieces of paper together and made them into a book.
Now paper still comes from trees. We use a lot of paper every day. ①If we keep on wasting so much paper, there will not be any trees left on the earth. If there are no trees, there will be no paper. ②Every day, people all over the world throw away about 2800 tons (吨) of paper. It takes 17 trees to make one ton of paper. This means we are cutting down 48000 trees every day.
Since it takes more than 10 years for a tree to grow, we must start using less paper now. If we don’t, we will not have enough time to grow more trees to take the place of those we use for paper. So how can we save paper? We can use both sides of every piece of paper, especially when we are making notes. We can choose drinks in bottles instead of those in paper packets. We can also use cotton handkerchiefs (手帕) and not paper ones. When we go shopping, we can use fewer paper bags. If the shop assistant does give us a paper bag, we can save it and reuse it later.
Everyone can help save paper. If we all think carefully, we can help protect trees. But we should do it now, before it is too late.
小题1: 将①处翻译成汉语。
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小题2:根据②处完成下面的句子。（每空一词）
Every day, about 2800 tons of paper _________ ________ away by people all over the world.
小题3: 根据短文内容完成下面的句子。（每空一词）
Paper is made from trees, so we should try our best to _________ paper so that we can help ________ the trees.
