This is the new Cambridge First Certificate in English Listening test, 2016. Practicing on these Cambridge FCE Listening tests helps raise your score in the Cambridge English First exams. These tests are also very good to exercise English listening skills. Correct answers & audio transcript are posted below. SUBSCRIBE with us for the latest tests and support ! ======= TRANSCRIPTS Announcer: Now, our reporter Lucas Evans is going to tell us what’s happening in the supermarkets, which are coming under increasing pressure to use less cardboard and plastic to wrap up their products. Lucas, where is this pressure coming from, and why? Lucas: Well, this is interesting because (9) it’s customers, rather than environmental groups or the government, that are making them think again about how much of this stuff they use. We know this from research carried out by the country’s largest supermarket chains. It showed that a majority of people are annoyed about having to put so much packaging into the rubbish bin whenever they’ve been shopping. (10) The survey indicated that about 80% of us would like to throw out less food and packaging, with around 20% going further, saying they wouldn’t buy a particular item if it were difficult to get rid of. Many people wonder why so many household and food products have to be wrapped in plastic or cardboard, especially when (11) they are packaged twice. This is the case, for instance, with chocolates sold in a box that are also inside separate pieces of silver paper. The argument used by the manufacturer, that it encourages people to eat more slowly, doesn’t seem very convincing to me, somehow. Many of the people questioned, though, say they understand why certain products - toys, for instance - need to be sold wrapped in plastic. For kids, it’s part of the excitement. But (12) there’s one thing that almost everyone agrees should never be sold like that, and that’s fruit and vegetables. It’s crazy, they say, to pick them from trees or dig them up, then wrap them up in materials that will eventually be thrown out. Change is coming. At least one supermarket chain has announced that it will no longer package fresh apples or carrots, for instance. Another wants to find out which products they can redesign with less wasteful packaging. It is encouraging customers to (13) take off any plastic or cardboard they don’t need and leave it behind when they take the items through the check-out, where special containers are provided for it. This, the supermarkets say, is just one of the steps they are taking to reduce waste, for example reusing waste paper and making bottles with thinner glass. For some environmentalists, though, these changes don’t go far enough. Certain groups say that ‘naming and shaming’ is the best way to deal with (14) stores that continue to wrap everything in throw-away materials, believing that negative publicity will hurt them financially. With so many people against unnecessary waste, they may be right. Another criticism is that the waste material from packaging is harmful to the environment. Much of it is poisonous when burnt, and the stuff exported for burial in other parts of the world is often a danger to health. (15) The companies that produce this material reply that changes in the way household rubbish is now separated into paper, plastics and so on. mean that more and more of it ends up being recycled, so far less has to be got rid of. This, however, is not the way the Local Government Association sees it. This organisation has carried out a study which indicates that about 40% of the packaging from supermarkets is difficult, or impossible, to recycle. Consequently, (16) they propose a tax on them to cover the enormous cost to councils of getting rid of all this waste. A quite different solution is put forward by certain consumer groups. They believe that supermarkets will never give up using fancy packaging, so (17) the answer lies in purchasing as much as possible in the only places where almost everything is sold unwrapped: street markets. Small shops, they say, increasingly sell exactly the same packaged goods as the big supermarkets. In the end, though, the supermarkets will have to adapt to changing attitudes towards waste. It’s interesting that over the last few years there has been an important change for customers in that (18) many supermarkets and stores have stopped giving away plastic bags. And that change came about almost entirely because of consumer pressure. Will that also soon mean the end of carrots sold in plastic wrappings? ======== CORRECT ANSWERS 9. (the)/(their) customers 10. 80% / eighty per cent 11. chocolates 12. fruit and vegetables 13. (special) containers 14. publicity 15. recycled 16. tax 17. (street) markets 18. (plastic) bags