IELTS Speaking for Success - ♻️ Recycling and waste (Part 3) + Transcript

Episode Date: August 14, 2026

Get access to our episode archive: https://successwithielts.com/ Think your old coat is 'threadbare'? Rory explains why second-hand clothes are great, but what should we do with all our waste? Discover key phrasal verbs for recycling and managing your stuff! Tune in and have a great day! - Book a class with Rory here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://successwithielts.com/rory⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Our course on Phrasal Verbs: https://successwithielts.com/podcourses Transcript: https://successwithielts.com/ Find an IELTS Speaking Partner: https://links.successwithielts.com/ieltspartner Our social media: https://linktr.ee/successwithielts © 2025 Podcourses Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode is brought to you by Accenture. When your advertising operations fall out of sync, everything else follows. Spotify and Accenture are working together to reinvent the rhythm of ad sales, using automation, analytics, and smarter workflows to simplify campaign delivery and access better data across the business. The result? Less time spent on operations, more time connecting brands with the moments and fandoms that matter most. Learn more at Accenture.com slash Spotify. Hello, hello, dear listener, and welcome.

Into IEL speaking, part three. We're discussing recycling and waste. What a lovely topic. Let's get started. Do you think it's a good idea for children to wear secondhand clothes? Usually, yeah, they might not be a perfect fit, but provided they aren't thread bare, then it's a good way to save money.

Can you explain it further? Yeah, generally. these things tend to cost less than things that are in the shop, so you can probably get by with them just as well. Unless you need to go to some kind of very posh event, then they might not be suitable. What do people usually do with unwanted clothes or household items where you live? I'm not sure, though I'd like to believe they recycle them or hand them down to their siblings or children to use. we even have recycling centers for clothes, so it would make sense to send them there

rather than just chuck them out. Has that always been true? I really can't say for sure, though I suppose everybody wants to believe their countrymen are good and responsible people, don't they? How can recycling and reusing items help reduce waste? Well, if you have something already, then you don't need to get something new

and companies don't need to produce as many new things. at least that's how it should work in theory. I'm sure the market will produce a surplus of goods regardless, but recycling might reduce the demand and in turn reduce the surplus. Do you think that will also be true in the future? Unless the system of economics radically changes, then I suppose so, yeah. What more can governments and individuals do to better manage their waste? I don't really know.

Maybe they could fund more opportunities to recycle and take advantage of them or make the process more efficient and effective, but I don't know enough about waste reclamation to say for sure if that's possible. And how likely do you think that is? Well, just based on what I've seen and heard, I'm none too confident about it.

I think people are suffering from a kind of crisis fatigue and really struggle to care about things like that these days. This episode is brought to you by Accenture. When your advertising operations fall out of sync, everything else follows. Spotify and Accenture are working together to reinvent the rhythm of ad sales, using automation, analytics, and smarter workflows to simplify campaign delivery and access better data across the business. The result? Less time spent on operations, more time connecting brands with the moments and fandoms that matter most. Learn more at Accenture.com slash Spotify. As you know, we now release all of our

premium content for free and it's available for one month after one month it goes into our super secret archive to sign up for the archive click the link in the description below see you soon yeah we are talking about

recycling so recycle different materials like recycling glass recycling paper usually people recycle plastic plastic plastic bags, batteries, do batteries get recycled?

I don't know if they can be recycled as much as clothes can, but you can definitely do things with them. Waste. By waste, we mean unwanted material. Like what is left? What should be removed? Like human waste, nuclear waste, household waste. So waste from your house. second-hand clothes or used clothes and they may not be a perfect fit clothes they so we say second-hand clothes are bad for children or second-hand clothes are cheap

they are cheap they are expensive if they're in a bad condition they might be thread bare which means they've been worn so much that the material starts to come apart Yeah, and also we use this one-out, right? So clothes could be one-out. Yes, absolutely, if you wear them too much. Yeah, or thread-bear. Right, so thread-bear material or thread-bear clothes become thin, damaged, because they have been used a lot. So, for example, a thread-bear coat. It's one word, threadbare. If you can't remember this one, just use used clothes, second-hand clothes. So such things, such clothes tends to cost less. So it's cheap, it's much cheaper, and you don't have to shell out for new clothes and change clothes all the time when children grow up. But they may not be suitable, right? So they again, clothes. A second hand clothes may not be a perfect fit. May not fit children, may not be suitable for children, may look old.

unwanted clothes and also like household items. Household meaning like house, like things you have at home, maybe like a kettle, chairs, furniture, different, you know, microwave oven, perhaps washing machine, which is old. And you can say like, well, I'm not sure. Like I don't, I don't know what people usually do. They can sell them. They can throw them away. Or they can recycle them. As for clothes, usually people hand them down to their siblings. So if something is handed down, it's given to the next generation or the younger people. Hand down clothes. Siblings, brothers or sisters.

So if you have some unwanted clothes, usually what do you do with them, you give these clothes to your sibling, so to your brother or sister. Sibling is C2, band nine. Could be brother or sister. Yeah, so usually people hand them down to their siblings or children or their relatives, children. And again, hand them down. So what do people do with unwanted clothes? They hand them down.

Them, not people, but clothes. There are some recycling centers. Yeah, places to recycle. There are some recycling centers and you can take. unwanted clothes to recycling centers. Or people just chuck them out. Chuck them out, throw them out. When you say countrymen, do you mean the government?

No, countrymen are people who are like your fellow citizens. So countrymen, men or people from your own country. Like fellow countrymen. Doesn't mean men could be women as well, just people in general. people usually recycle to reduce waste. People reuse items, reuse products to reduce waste. A surplus of goods. That's like something that's extra to requirements.

So the things that people don't need, but there's additional stuff. Yeah. Surplus more than needed. Usually we talk about producing a lot of products, so the world is now producing large food surpluses. So large amounts of food. See too. Also bad name.

Really? I thought that would be advanced. A surplus? No, it's not. No, it is, yeah. Could you give us another example with that? Oh, I suppose if there's too many people applying for a job, then you have a surplus of candidates.

Yeah. And about waste. What can we say about waste? Well, it wouldn't be a surplus of waste because a surplus is something that you want to use. Yeah, surplus of goods, surplus of products. surplus of products. And we can reduce the surplus. So reduce large amounts of goods.

Governments or the government and people, individuals, can do different things to manage waste. Again, to manage waste. Like waste, like household waste, rubbish. The government can fund more opportunities to recycle. So give money to different companies to help them recycle. Maybe if the government can find the money. People can focus on their daily behavior.

Yeah, people can buy less. You know, they can reuse products. They can sort products properly, like sort out their rubbish. So, like, recycle their rubbish. And the government can ask manufacturers can ask companies to take responsibility for their product. Also like I introduce bans. Like we ban different plastics. We ban non-recyclable materials. There we go. So to ban non-recyclable materials just to say that, okay, companies, everybody should use recyclable materials in their products now. Go. Yeah. And for people, sort out your rubbish

and adopt the three hours. Reduce consumption, reuse products. and recycle. Or you could use one of my R's, which is waste reclamation, and to say, I don't know much about waste reclamation, which is using things from waste to make things. And you can say, like, based on what I've seen, I think that, ta-t-da. So based on what I've heard, this is da-t-t-ta.

If you have zero knowledge on the topic, you can say, I'm not too confident about it. I don't know much. I'm not too confident on this subject but people can find some recycling centers they can learn how to arrange home composting if they feel so inclined

it's when you have a pile of soil in your garden right yeah like a pile of soil where you put all the kind of waste from vegetables like from food you know like food wastes Yeah, like build up your own home composting. Or just say you don't know much about waste reclamation. Oh, learn about home composting. What a way to spend your time. Thank you very much for listening.

We'll get back to you in our next episode. Bye. This episode is brought to you by Accenture. When your advertising operations fall out of sync, everything else follows. Spotify and Accenture are working together to reindexempt. invent the rhythm of ad sales, using automation, analytics and smarter workflows to simplify campaign delivery and access better data across the business. The result? Less time spent on operations, more time connecting brands with the moments and fandoms that matter most. Learn more at Accenture.com

slash Spotify. Do you think it's a good idea for children to wear secondhand clothes? Usually, yeah, they might not be a perfect fit, but provided they aren't thread bare, then it's a good way to save money. Can you explain it further? Yeah, generally these things tend to cost less than things that are in the shop, so you can probably get by with them just as well. Unless you need to go to some kind of very posh event, then they might not be suitable. What do people usually do with unwanted clothes or household items where you live?

I'm not sure, though I'd like to believe they recycle them or hand them down to their siblings or children to use. We even have recycling centers for clothes, so it would make sense to send them there rather than just chuck them out. Has that always been true? I really can't say for sure, though I suppose everybody wants to believe their countrymen are good and responsible people, don't they? How can recycling and reusing items help reduce waste? Well, if you have something already, then you don't need to get something new and companies don't need to produce as many new things. At least that's how it should work in theory. I'm sure the market will produce a surplus of goods regardless, but recycling might reduce the demand and in turn reduce the surplus.

Do you think that will also be true in the future? Unless the system of economics radically changes, then I suppose so, yeah. What more can governments and individuals do to better manage? their waste. I don't really know. Maybe they could fund more opportunities to recycle and take advantage of them or make the process more efficient and effective, but I don't know enough about waste reclamation to say for sure if that's possible. And how likely do you think that is? Well, just based on what I've seen and heard, I'm none too confident about it. I think people are suffering from a kind of crisis fatigue and really struggle to care about things like that

these days.