Номер B, страница 117 - гдз по английскому языку 11 класс учебник Комарова, Ларионова

Unit five. Reading.

To buy or not to buy.

Have you ever stopped to ask yourself if you really need everything you buy? Could you survive for a year without shopping for non-essentials? If, like most people in the first world, you buy a lot of things on impulse, you'll probably think that twelve months without shopping is impossible, but it can be done. Even if you're a shopaholic.

One New Year's Eve, a group of ten friends from San Francisco made a surprising resolution.

They decided to give up going to the shops for a year. Why? Because they were fed up with being part of America's consumer society, and they realized that if everyone in the world consumed the same amount of resources as people in the United States, there would be a global economic disaster.

The members of The Compact, as they called themselves, wanted to make a stand against the pressure from advertisers and retailers to shop 'til you drop. They had strict rules. They could buy essentials like toothpaste, soap, and medicines, but new clothes, gadgets and mobile phones were out, even if they were broken. If there was anything else they needed, they would have to swap, borrow, make, or buy it second-hand.

The Compact's decision to renounce recreational spending soon attracted global interest after a report appeared on TV. Critics, of course, complained that this was un-American and argued that if everyone stopped shopping, the economy would suffer.

However, people all over the USA and abroad began signing up to swap goods rather than make trips to the shopping center. Websites like Freecycle, where people offer unwanted possessions online for free, rather than throw them away, helped Compactors stick to their commitments too. Environmentalists naturally saw this as a great way to help the planet and argued that if only more people joined in, the Earth's future would be brighter.

Members of The Compact were surprised at reactions to their experiment.

They had started their project more as a personal challenge than a mass movement. "If we hadn't done this, I wouldn't have realized just how easy it is," explained John Perry, one of The Compact's founders. Some even discovered that not spending made them happier and gave them more free time. As Ellen King, a new non-shopper put it, "If you're not worrying about what you're going to spend your money on next, you feel more relaxed. It gives you the time to enjoy the things you have. I wish I'd tried it years ago."