Making Coffee Greener & Warming World

News Bites

Hi everyone, welcome to a new episode of News Bites! I'm Kelly Kimura… And I'm Paz Bueno. Coming up next in today's news: A barista is making coffee greener And in a warming world, how do we keep ourselves safe from getting too hot? And in today's Tasty Tidbit… Are there any shared birthdays in your class? Stay tuned for more on those stories! ___________________________________________________________ **咖啡師正在讓咖啡更環保 ** Barista Is Making Coffee Greener Coffee is very popular in Taiwan. People bought almost 3 billion cups of coffee here in 2022. All those cups of coffee mean there are a lot of used coffee grounds (咖啡渣). Some of the coffee grounds are used to fertilize (當作肥料) plants or take away bad smells. But most are thrown away. A barista from Changhua is making his business, and coffee, greener (更環保). His café was throwing away a lot of used coffee grounds. That made him realize how wasteful (浪費的) the coffee industry (產業) was. Coffee farmers harvest (採收) only the beans inside the coffee fruit. The rest (其餘的) of the fruit is thrown away. The barista is looking for products that use more of the coffee fruit. Now he makes tea from the coffee fruit. He’s also reusing coffee grounds in new products (產品). He learned that coffee grounds can repel (驅除) insects. There weren’t any coffee products that did this in Taiwan. The barista and a former classmate who had an incense (線香) factory (工廠) worked together. They made mosquito coils (蚊香) from used coffee grounds. The mosquito coils were successful, so the barista looked for other products to make. Now he makes coffee charcoal (咖啡炭) and soap (肥皂) from coffee grounds. Making coffee charcoal instead of wood charcoal saves a lot of energy (能源). Coffee charcoal takes one day to make, but wood charcoal takes a month! With the coffee soap, the barista says people can wash their hands more quickly, so they use less water. 當地超市和連鎖便利商店都對他的產品有興趣。 The barista says that he will not stop here. He is trying to make fuel sticks (燃料棒) from coffee grounds now. If he can do this, he wants to build a factory to process coffee grounds. Then he would use these fuel sticks to fuel the factory making coffee ground products! ___________________________________________________________ 氣候暖化，我們要如何保護自己不要受到熱天氣的影響？ In a Warming World, How Do We Protect Ourselves from Getting Too Hot? It is not news that our world is getting warmer. Over the past few weeks, daily temperatures (每天溫度) of 35 degrees Celsius (攝氏) have become normal (正常). Our bodies adjust (調整) to temperature changes. Our brains tell our bodies to warm up or cool down when we are cooler or warmer than usual. Our bodies have a few ways to cool down. The most common way is sweating (流汗). Our pores (毛孔) open, we sweat, and the sweat evaporates (蒸發). This process (流程) cools our bodies. Our bodies also dilate (擴張) our blood vessels (血管) and increase our heart rate (心率). This process brings heat and blood (血液) to our skin and releases excessive (過多的) heat. However, when temperatures are very high, our bodies might not be able to cool down fast enough. What’s more, if we are in a hot and humid (潮濕) place, our sweat can’t evaporate. This makes our body temperature go up. Our brain and organs (器官) might be damaged (受損) by high body temperatures. High body temperatures can also lead to heat-related illnesses (疾病). They include heat cramps (熱痙攣), heat rash (汗疹) heat exhaustion (熱衰竭) and heat stroke (中暑). How can you protect (保護) yourself from getting too hot? Don’t wait until you’re thirsty to drink water - drink at least a glass of water every hour. Avoid outdoor activities (戶外運動) from 11 am to 3 pm, when it’s hottest outside. If you have to go out, wear light-colored clothes, drink lots of fluids (液體) and cover your head. If you’re light-headed (頭暈), dizzy (暈眩的), sweating, or have a racing heartbeat (心跳加速), get out of the heat and cool down! 天氣炎熱時，老人、兒童、慢性病患者更要注意身體狀況。 We have to protect ourselves from the heat! ___________________________________________________________ So in today's News Bites: A barista is making coffee greener. He saw how wasteful the coffee industry is. He now has made coffee-related products that reuse coffee beans or use more of the fruit. ___________________________________________________________ And… Sometimes our bodies can’t adjust to higher temperatures. Heat can damage our bodies. Protect yourself and avoid outdoor activities when the sun is strongest. ___________________________________________________________ 趣味小點 Tasty Tidbit How many students are there in your class? If there are 23, there’s a fifty percent chance that two people have the same birthday! How do we figure out (弄清楚) the probability (可能性)? First, what is the probability that everyone has a DIFFERENT birthday? When there are two in the class, there’s only one day that could be the same. The probability is 364 divided by 365. We are not going to think about leap years (閏年) here! For a class of three, the probability is 363 divided by 365. So… for a class of twenty-three, it’s 343 divided by 365. Phew! Then for the probability that all the students in the class have different birthdays, we’ve multiplied all the probabilities for you. The answer is 0.493. That means the probability of a shared birthday is 1 minus 0.493, or 50.7 percent! So… do you share a birthday with a classmate? ___________________________________________________________ And that's it for today's episode of News Bites! If you have a fun fact, a joke, or interesting news you'd like to share with us, record your message and send your Tasty Tidbit to us at [e-mail]. You might hear it at the end of an episode! We'll see you next time for an exciting new episode of News Bites!