相傳曾經有位老奶奶,有一天閑來無事清理冰箱存貨,在冷凍室的最里面翻出來一只不知道藏了多久的火雞,老奶奶給生產廠家打電話,問這火雞還能不能吃,廠家回話說:“您可千萬別吃了,快扔了吧!”你猜老奶奶怎么說?她老人家堅定地說:“這么好的火雞,我可舍不得扔,我拿去捐給災區的人們好了。”……這就是本文要論述的問題。
SWEDOW (Stuff WE DOn't Want) refers to unnecessary or inappropriate items donated to a charity organization or relief effort.
SWEDOW(“我們不需要的物品”英文表達的縮寫形式)指慈善或救災組織收到的不必要的或者不合時宜的捐助物品。
In Indonesia, 4,000 tonnes of donated drugs arrived after the tsunami, well beyond local needs. Most of those drugs weren't required, were labelled in foreign languages or were close to expiry. They overwhelmed the capacity of local incinerators to dispose of them. The problem is known by the acronym SWEDOW.
印尼海嘯之后,有4000噸捐助的藥品抵達當地,大大超出了當地的需求量。這些藥品中的大多數要么不是災區當時需要的,要么是用外語標注使用說明的,要么就是快過期的。為了銷毀這些藥品,當地垃圾焚化爐甚至都超負荷運轉。這樣的問題就叫做SWEDOW。
The latest SWEDOW dump came in the form of a massive donation from the National Football League to the Christian relief group World Vision. After the Green Bay Packers won the Super Bowl, the NFL was stuck with thousands of T-shirts heralding the Pittsburgh Steelers as champs. The league donated the merchandise to World Vision, which in turn plans to ship it to Armenia, Nicaragua, Romania and Zambia.
最近的一次SWEDOW事件與美國國家橄欖球聯盟(NFL)給世界宣明會新西蘭基督城救災小組的大宗捐贈物品有關。綠灣包裝工隊贏得超級碗冠軍后,NFL手里就積壓了大量宣傳匹茲堡鋼人隊得冠軍的T恤。他們把這些T恤捐給了世界宣明會,結果,后者只能把T恤運去亞美尼亞、尼加拉瓜、羅馬尼亞和贊比亞等國家。