TOEFL Speaking Task 4 Practice 033Business

Listen to part of a lecture in a business class. As you know, these days, people are becoming more and more conscious of how important it is to protect our natural environment, of how important it is to protect the atmosphere, the oceans, the soil, and so on. And so, more and more companies have now implemented environmentally friendly business practices. They're running their businesses in ways that help protect the environment. For example, by conserving energy and preserving natural resources. And for business owners, there's some good news here. And that is that environmentally friendly business practices not only benefit the environment, but they can also benefit the businesses themselves. And they can do that in a couple of different ways. First, environmentally friendly practices can help businesses save money by reducing their operating costs. And for example, there's a coffee shop here in town. And a couple of years ago, they decided they wanted to do something to help protect the environment. So they made a commitment to reduce their energy use. And so one thing they did was they changed the kind of light bulbs they were using. They replaced their regular light bulbs with special light bulbs that use less energy and last longer. So that was good for the environment. And it was good for the coffee shop. Because it's significant. And so I think that there's some great resources that are currently reduced the amount of money they were spending on electricity each month. Environmentally friendly practices can also help businesses by making them more attractive to certain consumers. Because if a business helps protect the environment, consumers who are concerned about the environment are more likely to feel positive about that business. And are more likely to spend money there. For example, the coffee shop I was talking about. Another thing they changed was they changed the kind of napkins and paper cups they were using. They began to use only napkins and cups made from recycled paper. Because the new napkins and cups were manufactured from old recycled paper, no one had to cut down any new trees to produce them. And so the coffee shop was helping to protect the environment. And the coffee shop then wisely started mentioning that in their advertising. And they started drawing more customers who were concerned about protecting the environment.