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11/6/2023 (#21 this year)
The whole school is back together again! The jhs 3rd grade are back from Canada andthe 5th grade are back from Cambodia, Taiwan, and Okinawa. I hope everyone had agreat time. I know that the JHS had a good time in Canada because I was there withthem. Canada is a beautiful country and everybody is so friendly. We can all relax andget back into normal school life for a while now. We don’t have any big events for awhile. Autumn seems to have arrived while I was away in Canada. The mornings are
getting darker and the weather is getting colder. Many people don’t like that, but, tome, it means Christmas is getting close! And I love Christmas!!!
10 differences

Last week’s answer

Something you didn’t know about Amazon:
1. Jeff Bezos started Amazon in 1994. He wanted to call it “Relentless1”. If you type inrelentless.com it will redirect to Amazon.
2. Amazon owns more than 100 other companies.
3. Amazon employs2 over 1.6 million people around the world. That makes it number 8
in the world. Walmart is number 1 with 2.3 million employees.
4. In the logo of Amazon, the arrow goes from A to Z because you can buy everything.
5. Amazon sells many things, but it actually makes most of its money from technology.
Amazon Web Services is its technology arm3 and hosts many major companies, such as
Netflix, LinkedIn, and Facebook.

Amazon Makes Packaging That Fits The ProductHave you ever ordered anything from Amazon? I order a lot of stuff andno matter what I order, it always seems to come in the same size box. Eventiny things are vacuum sealed4 to the bottom of giant, empty boxes. There isa huge amount of waste5. Amazon always said it is easier to do this than try tofind different sized boxes for every product. They stock millions of products,and their warehouse6 staff have to fill the boxes as quickly as they can. If thestaff had to sort through a variety of boxes to find the one that best fitted, itwould slow them down and make the job more difficult. This was Amazon’s
main argument.
Amazon sends billions of packages every year and all of that waste starts toadd up. However, recently, Amazon has done two things to change the way
they pack their products. The first thing they have done is install an AI system
to analyze7 how to pack items inside a box. The computer can work out how
to put things into a box that might seem too small in order to cut waste. It
sends instructions to the packer on how to arrange the items inside the box.
The second thing is to make packaging that fits the product. Amazon has ascience department and they have put a lot of time into coming up withweather-resistant8 stretchy9 paper that can be completely recycled. A machinescans the product that is going to be wrapped and then cuts the stretchy paper
to the correct size. The paper is then sealed with heat. Using this machine
reduces an average of 26 grams of packaging per parcel. That is about 60,000
tons a year for Amazon.

1.relentless 無慈悲な 2.employ 雇う 3.arm 部門 4.vacuum seal 真空包装 5.waste 無駄
6.warehouse 倉庫 7.analyze 分析する 8.weather-resistant 耐候性の 9.stretchy 伸びやすいWorld record
I wrote a few weeks ago about how we should all take shorter showers. I have actually
been doing that. I bought a waterproof1 timer that I use, and I make sure I don’t use
more than 4 minutes of water, although my goal is always under 3 minutes. Well, Kevin“Catfish” McCarthy has the world record for the longest shower in the world. In 1985,
he spent 341 hours in the shower! That is 5 hours over two weeks. He used a shower in
his dormitory2 at Buffalo State College. This sounds like a relatively3 easy record at first,
but if you think about it, it isn’t. The first problem is you have stay under the showerheadfor it to be counted as “showering”. That makes it very difficult to sleep. Also, being inwater for a long time can damage our skin. The skin can chafe4 or even peel off5 after
longer than 12 hours in water. A shower is a little different to a bath because you can let
different parts of the body dry at a time, so Kevin survived. However, an average shower
uses about 60 liters of water a minute, which means in 361 hours Kevin used 1,299,600
liters of water. That is about the same as an Olympic swimming pool!

The happiness of your life depends
on the quality of your thoughts.
6Marcus Aurelius–One thing we can do to help the environment#7 Use my own coffee cup
This is a solution that I am not sure if I can do. I have a tumbler that I canuse in Starbucks. Whenever I go, I can use my own tumbler and I get asmall discount7. The discount is nice, but the whole point8 of using yourown cup is to help the environment. Across all of its stores, Starbucks uses
8,000 paper cups every minute!!! That’s 4 billion cups a year. And Starbuck
is only one coffee chain. All of the coffee shops use billions of these cups.
Using your own cup can cut down on this waste, which helps theenvironment in so many ways. So, why don’t I think I can do it? I don’t
drink Starbucks’ coffee that often. I drink convenience store coffee far
more often and I’m not sure if you can use your own coffee cup in aconvenience store. I have done some research online and it looks like you
can use your own cup in Lawson. Some 7-11s let you use your own cup,and some don’t. FamilyMart won’t let you use your own cup. So, I guessthat means I am going to be drinking more Lawson coffee from now on. I
have always thought it strange that convenience stores don’t sell a “mycup”. Starbucks don’t sell their own tumbler because it is good for theenvironment. They sell it because it makes them look good, they makemoney from the tumbler, and if you own a Starbucks’ tumbler you are
more likely to buy coffee at Starbucks. 7-11 should do this.

1. 1.waterproof 防水 2.dormitory 寮 3.relatively 比較的 4.chafe すり減らす 5.peel off
剥く 6.depend on～による 7.discount 割引 8.the whole point of～の本質