The passive

Complete the following passage with the appropriate passive forms of the verbs in brackets.


A new campaign (1) was launched (launch) earlier this year by the UK government which aims to
reduce the amount of domestic waste. Households (2) _______________________ (encourage) to recycle
certain waste products and to sort and prepare others for collection at specific sites. From there
they (3) ___________________ (take) to special waste treatment plants where special machinery will
process them for reuse as recycled material.

In Britain today, when the contents of the average household dustbin (4) ____________________
(analyse), we find that, in terms of weight, 35% of the total

(5) _____________________ (compose) of paper and cardboard, 22% of kitchen waste, 12% of plastics
with glass, dust and ashes each representing a further 10%.

There are in fact only a few items of domestic waste that cannot (6) ___________________ (recycle).
One common example is disposable nappies which, as their name suggests,

(7) ___________________ (design) to be thrown away after use. However, a lot of progress could (8)
___________________ (make) to reduce the amount of kitchen waste most of which can (9)
___________________ (transform) into a useful garden fertiliser. Indeed, if more people chose to do
this then the weight of the average dustbin (10) _______________ (reduce) quite significantly.

In terms of glass products, the situation is more encouraging as nearly 20% of all the glass that
(11) ___________________ (use) every year in the country (12) __________________ (take) back for
recycling.

Nonetheless, it is clear that the mountains of domestic waste will only decrease if efforts (13)
___________________ (make) both by individual households and local government authorities. Special
equipment such as collection trucks must (14) ___________________ (purchase) and people must (15)
___________________ (make) aware of how they can contribute to improving the situation. This (16)
___________________ (achieve) with increasing success in a number of regions in Europe during the
last few years, a trend that (17) ___________________ (expect) to continue in the future.