arrow back icon Top Answers

Describe A Time When You Saw A Lot Of Plastic Waste: IELTS Speaking Cue Card

You should say

  • Where and when did you see the plastic waste?
  • Why was there a lot of plastic waste?
  • What did you do after you saw it?
  • And explain what your thoughts were about this.
Show all 77 answers

Cue 1:Where and when did you see the plastic waste?

  • Begin by describing the location where you encountered the plastic waste, such as a beach, park, or riverbank.
  • Mention the time of year or specific occasion, like a festival or holiday, to give context to your experience.

Example

I saw a lot of plastic waste last summer at Juhu Beach in Mumbai. It was during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival, a time when many people visit the beach to immerse idols. Unfortunately, after the celebrations, the beach was littered with plastic bags, bottles, and food wrappers.

Cue 2:Why was there a lot of plastic waste?

  • Explain the reasons behind the accumulation of plastic waste, such as lack of awareness or inadequate waste disposal facilities.
  • You can also mention the cultural practices that contribute to the problem, like the use of single-use plastics during festivals.

Example

The reason for the excessive plastic waste was mainly due to the large number of visitors who brought food and drinks in plastic containers. Many people were unaware of the environmental impact of their actions, and there were not enough bins available for proper disposal.

Cue 3:What did you do after you saw it?

  • Share your immediate reaction upon seeing the plastic waste and any actions you took.
  • Mention if you participated in any clean-up efforts or raised awareness about the issue.

Example

After seeing the plastic waste, I felt compelled to do something. I joined a local group that was organizing a beach clean-up the following weekend. We collected bags full of plastic and other debris, and it felt good to contribute to the environment.

Cue 4:And explain what your thoughts were about this.

  • Reflect on your feelings regarding the situation and the broader implications of plastic waste.
  • Discuss any changes in your behavior or perspective that resulted from this experience.

Example

Seeing the plastic waste made me really concerned about our environment. It made me realize how important it is to reduce plastic usage and promote recycling. Since then, I’ve started carrying my own reusable bags and bottles to minimize my plastic footprint.

Conclusion

    Example

    In conclusion, witnessing the plastic waste at Juhu Beach was an eye-opening experience. It highlighted the urgent need for awareness and action regarding plastic pollution. I believe that if we all take small steps, we can make a significant difference in protecting our environment.

    Following this structure will ensure you cover all the essential points while providing a clear and engaging response to the cue card topic.

    Tips to answer this Cue Card

    1: Vague Descriptions

    Using vague language can make your answer unclear. Avoid general statements that do not provide specific details about the location or situation of the plastic waste.

    bulb icon

    Tip

    Be specific about where and when you saw the plastic waste. Use descriptive language to paint a clear picture for the examiner.

    2: Lack of Personal Reflection

    Failing to share your personal thoughts can make your response less engaging. It's important to express how the experience affected you emotionally or intellectually.

    bulb icon

    Tip

    Include your feelings and thoughts about the plastic waste. Explain why it was significant to you and what you learned from the experience.

    Ignoring the Cause

    Not addressing why there was a lot of plastic waste can lead to an incomplete answer. Understanding the cause adds depth to your response.

    bulb icon

    Tip

    Discuss the reasons behind the plastic waste, such as local events or habits. This shows your awareness of environmental issues and enhances your answer.

    calendar icon

    IELTS Cue Cards asked last week

    Reported by Leap students who gave IELTS

    Describe your favourite food at a traditional festival or a special event in your country
    anonymous person icon

    Reported by

    Anonymous student Band 7.5

    location icon

    Pitampura Test Centre, New Delhi

    Answer

    I like to taste different types of cuisine. Here I would like to talk about my favorite dish at my traditional festival of Onam which is Sadya. Sadya is popular in my city. We are experimenting these cuisines on Onam festival day. Onam is a famous festival in my city. All family members get together in my home and we make a delicious Sadya. There are many ingredients includes that Sadya. Moreover, we make a big feast that day as well as we create a lot of memories together and we wear that day the traditional dress called Sari and men wear the Dhotis. That festival is really important to us because the whole day we are conducting different kinds of games at our homes and all the family members came together. It's a memorable day in my life. This is the festival. We are making the Sambar and Aviyal. These all the kinds of foods are making with the vegetables.
    Talk about a toy you liked in your childhood
    anonymous person icon

    Reported by

    Anonymous student Band 8

    location icon

    Sector 34 Test Centre, Chandigarh

    Answer

    The toy which I liked in my childhood was a panda doll, which makes me pleasant and makes me more blush. The pandas are the most beautiful creatures of the world, which looks gigantic and has pooshy cheeks and they are like stars in the clouds and they dream in me. Furthermore, these have been given by my father. My father is a very very beautiful artistic person, who makes me think of that. Every day you will face every difficulties and make you suffer and move forward. Pandas are always seen in Japanese countries. It is my lifelong dream to visit a Japanese country and click a photo with the original pandas, which makes sounds better.
    Describe a time you were in a place where you didn't know the local language
    anonymous person icon

    Reported by

    Anonymous student Band 6.5

    location icon

    Whitefield Test Center, Bengaluru

    Answer

    As India is a very large country full of diversity, so there are many places which have their own language and speak their native language. The place which I visited and I didn't know about their language was Leladakh, which is about 300 km away from my hometown and it is a very good place as it consists of different kind of trees, animals and have many scenic views and I visited over there last year in summers as it was the best time to visit because it has many, it was cold over there and we had summers in our area so it was the best time to visit over there and I went over there with my whole family.
    Describe a time when your friend damaged something you owned
    anonymous person icon

    Reported by

    Anonymous student Band 7

    location icon

    Begumpet Test Centre, Hyderabad

    Answer

    When I was a kid, I had a little pencil box which had these four buttons which gave the pencil box an operative use. When you press the button, the box would open up. When you press the second button, a little part of it would slide out. Basically it was just a little electronical and a fun thing to have and I owned it when I was in 6th. One day after break, I was standing and talking there with one of my friends and another friend of mine was running through the hallway and accidentally she pushed my shoulder and my pencil box hit the ground and it broke into multiple pieces to the point that it was not functional anymore.
    Describe a book you recently read
    anonymous person icon

    Reported by

    Anonymous student Band 7.5

    location icon

    CBD Belapur Test Centre, Navi Mumbai

    Answer

    It Ends With Us is a book I read recently. It's by the author Colleen Hoare. It's mainly a story about two teenagers, Atlas and Lily, and how they just handle their life going through high school, adolescence, and just domestic violence at home. Both of them come from very, very different families. However, they have one common determining factor between them, which is domestic violence. The abuse that they've seen their moms go through is just insane, and they connect through that on a different level. They're actually in the same high school, but they never speak to each other until Atlas actually crashes into an empty house next to Lily's villa. When Atlas is homeless and he doesn't have anywhere to go, he just comes and breaks into the house next to Lily's, and Lily helps him with all the daily necessities like clothes and food, medicines and stuff. Furthermore, their friendship blossoms into love, but it doesn't really fructify as Atlas has to leave. This book really gave me a lot of knowledge about domestic abuse and how to deal with it.

    All Answers

    Here are all the answers by real-users practicing speaking for IELTS Cue Cards on our IELTS Prep App.

    Band 6-7

    This instance was in my master's course days when I was residing in a place called Nayagaon. So I used to cross this dump yard everyday when I had to go to my college for my classes. So everyday people would just come in their vehicles and just dump their plastics and other household wastes in the same place where other peoples do. And out there there was a pile of plastics heaped up one above another. So it was very uncomfortable to pass that area as it had that particular smell which was very repellent. So as I saw this heap of plastic waste everyday I used to wonder what are the people around here doing about it. And when I came home and researched about this in YouTube I realized that the main problem lied in the location of this place. Because it was in the border areas, the fringe areas of Chandigarh and Punjab. So it was very difficult for any authority to maintain the cleanliness of that area. So I think it was the strategic location of this area which made it very difficult to have an authority over the waste dumping there. So people from both sides of the state came and dumped their waste in this area as there was no one to hinder them while doing that.

    Band 6-7

    In my country, we use a lot of plastic for our everyday essentials, like when we go to supermarket they used to offer us a plastic bag to carry our things home. And in small shops too, we used to get a plastic car after we finally pay the bill and we used to put our groceries in that plastic bag and he used to hand out to us. In India, it's very common thing to use plastic bags so that's why it is more often that we use plastic bags everywhere for our everyday things, like to carry vegetables or fruits or anything like that. That's why there is a lot of plastic waste in our country. Plastic has become a very big problem in India so we can regularly see it on roads, like plastic waste is all around the roads and now, nowadays cows are eating those plastic and they are getting sick of it by consuming the plastic on the roads. We need to reduce the use of plastic and we need to use more paper bags to reduce the pollution that is caused or occurred by plastic. We usually saw plastic bags or plastic waste everyday. The packing itself has plastic wrap on it. We used to take that wrap and we can eat the things or cook the things inside that thing. So plastic is a regular waste in India.

    Band 6-7

    A time, I do remember a time when I saw a lot of plastic waste. I still remember when I was in school, I was too excited about my school annual function. It was a time when I really enjoyed a lot. When I was a child, I was very fond of taking part in annual functions. Annual functions held at my school had many activities and performances. It also had many stalls where we could get eatables and many cuisines and dishes. We were also given invitation cards to invite our parents to the school annual function. I used to have a great time with my friends. But one thing which I didn't like was children as well as their parents when had the eatables, they threw the plastic or the waste material on the ground. Though we had many dustbins, but still they preferred throwing them rather than putting them in the dustbin itself. I really did not feel good after having witnessed this incident. So I went straight to my principal's office and talked to him about the matter. He listened to me profoundly and took the decision to make strict rules for people to throw their garbage in the dustbin and put a fire on those who repeated it again.

    Band 6-7

    I saw a lot of plastic waste on my road trip from Delhi to Meerut. I was going to Meerut in order to visit my grandparents with my family. On our way we saw a big mountain of plastic waste beside a river. There was a lot of plastic waste thrown which resulted in a big mountain. A putrid smell was coming from it and the view was very disgusting. On asking the locals we got to know that every week bulldozers come and throw waste from landfills in that area which has resulted in creation of a big mountain. In order to solve this problem my family and I took pictures of the mountain and shared it on twitter and tagged the local authorities. We continued to do this till the time there was any response from them. After weeks of attempts finally we got a message from the MCD that they would be taking strict action against the contractors who were throwing plastic waste in that area. After a few months the MCD with the help of the contractors slowly started to throw plastic from that area and send it to recycling plants.

    Band 6-7

    When I first visited Kashmir, it's a state in northern part of India, there was a village known as Pahelgaon. It's just the same as we see villages in plain lands. The village in Kashmir, in a hilly zone, area. So when I first visited that place and going by the, going amidst the mountains and going by the wavy roads, it was disheartening to see wastes which were mainly, primarily plastics. Plastic bottles or plastic polythene sheets on the road sides or maybe on the water bodies, mainly the Jhelum river that was flowing out there. So it was pathetic to see that because such an amazing place, such a beautiful place, very scenic and a treat to your eyes, to your mind, everything. But seeing such, at the same time when you see such snow-capped mountains and an amazing view from the window, but you have to also see those wastes flowing or maybe stuck on the plants or on the river sides, on the river bed, that was very shocking. I think it's a very small place, very small village, very less population is there. So disturbing enough to see that because people, we as citizens, it's a basic responsibility for us to keep a check on to all those things.

    Band 6-7

    The time when I saw the most amount of plastic waste was when I was going to my tuitions from my home. During that time, I was in my school time, so it was a long way back, and I saw a pile of plastic waste on the side of the road and some cows were trying to find their food in that junk. I was very sad looking at it as the cows may eat the plastic while trying to find food. The plastic waste was located at the corner of the road near the railway station. It was thinking really bad as it also had some other food litters within it. The most saddest part of it was to see other animals trying to find food. I think that the authorizations and people in the government should clean and take care of these places. I tried to help the cow to get away from the pile of plastic waste so that it doesn't eat it, and that is the thing that I helped out with.

    Band 6-7

    During my time in Loyola, I took up a project on reverse logistics, which is the flow of products from the end consumers to the manufacturers, so that the manufacturers can recycle them and redistribute them back to the market for consumers' use. This is supposed to reduce the use of non-renewable items like plastics. For this research, I visited a massive dump yard in Chennai, where I was given the chance to calculate the amount of plastic waste that could be recycled with the help of various plastic manufacturers in Tamil Nadu. Here, I noticed that the number of plastic bottles, bags, or packaging items that are being thrown amounts to almost seven to eight tons per day, and this is just plastic and not including other biodegradable and non-biodegradable waste. This was quite terrible, and it made me understand how much potential that a state could have, a city could have, when we're talking about recycling plastic waste. Seven to eight tons is approximately the weight of 12 to 15 elephants.

    Band 6-7

    I have been living in Delhi for quite some time now and it's not unusual at all to see a lot of plastic waste piled up around the streets, corners, on the roads, in front of the temples, schools, any kind of building, you name it, you will find some plastic waste around it lying here and there. Since Delhi is a very crowded and a congested city, this might also be the reason for the large amount of waste the city produces. I remember one time while I was coming to Delhi from my hometown, we took an unusual road which was new to us and we could see a huge mountain which is the infamous mountain of trash while entering Delhi and I felt very very disappointed on seeing it but it did inspire me to make several changes in my personal life to minimize the plastic waste I produce. I have switched to jute bags now, I use reusable bottles, I have stopped using plastic bottles, plastic bags etc.

    Band 6-7

    So, the place where I saw a lot of plastic was on the beach. I went on the beach with a VSO NGO through my college organization and when I went over there, I was not even having this thought in my mind that there would be so much of litter on the beach because whenever I have visited the beach, I have never seen so much waste or garbage on the area where normally people visit. So when we went with that NGO, they showed us a pile of garbage which was a kind of hidden in the end of the beach where normally people never used to visit. So, I was totally flabbergasted after seeing that because I didn't know that people litter so much on the beach. It is a very beautiful place and I don't think people should do that as a lot of dustbins and resources have been provided. You just need to have some social ethics in order to keep our surroundings clean and not make our earth a pile of garbage. So, after looking at that, we all made groups, we had plastic bags and gloves and some thongs and then we started picking up the litter, collecting it in many bags and then we cleaned up half of the beach and after 3 hours, we went back to our hostels. So this was my experience.

    Band 6-7

    Currently, the location I'm living in, it's I live in a, in an apartment complex. So right outside my complex, not I would say not right outside, I would say a little bit towards the end of the complex, when I step outside, I see this entire area, I won't say entire, I would say a little bit of the area, filled with littered goods. And it mostly constitute, constituted plastic. I was, I was genuinely shocked to see that people are living near, they have living quarters and right outside that, outside that, there is a huge pile of garbage. It was giving bad odour and also the animal, there were multiple animals, I saw multiple animals surrounding that area, trying to eat from there, which is completely unhealthy for them. Many animals die because of that. And not only that, I also saw many insects and birds sitting on that pile of garbage. Because of this, numerous diseases spread and people fall sick. So that kind of a thing to notice in a very developing city is very astonishing. I would obviously, I would definitely not like, I definitely don't like living near certain areas and seeing that in front of my complex is a horrible experience and I wish someone would take care of it, but it's a lot.
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
    ielts logo

    Get the IELTS Prep App

    Star rating icon

    4.2

    1M+ Installs

     app download banner image

    Get the app link on your phone

    +91

    Or download app from

    google play storeapp store
    master ielts speaking ad