The Canadian town of Churchill is well-known for its arctic (北极的) wilderness. This town of extremes is home to about 900 year-round residents. However, 500, 000 tourists, more or less, flood here throughout the year.

In this setting, there’s a special find in a simple shipping container just outside the town. It’s a new project called Rocket Greens, led by the Churchill Northern Studies Centre(CNSC). Rocket Greens has successfully demonstrated the possibility of planting fresh, leafy produce regardless of seasons or weather conditions.

Erin Greene, a Churchill resident since 2015, became one of the first subscribers to Rocket Greens’s CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) program. “When I first moved here, it was very hard to get good-quality fruits and vegetables. We would never get fresh herbs and never see things like Swiss chard or kale,” recalls Greene, who says she now maintains a healthier diet and has become more self-sufficient as a result of the program.

In addition to Rocket Greens, CNSC has set up a seeding project for community garden support. This involves planting seedlings during the late fall and early spring that have been distributed to local community members free of charge in summer. Due to the short growing season and the challenging agricultural conditions, this seeding project offers a head start. “Community members can receive plants at no charge. It’s an educational tool to learn how to seed a field properly and how to grow your own food in your own home,” explains Dylan McCart, director of CNSC. This year’s seeding program will include a variety of crops such as peas, corn and peppers to make up for the traditional vegetables that are typically planted during Churchill summers.

“Considering the challenges of operating in a remote location like Churchill, we were one of the first ones to be able to do it, so it’s great that we were able to have that vision at that time. And it’s still successful today,” McCart says.

A key part of protecting endangered species is figuring out where they’re living. Using environmental DNA, or eDNA, to track species isn’t new. For a few years now, researchers have been using DNA in water.

Two teams of scientists — one in Denmark led by Dr Kristine Bohmann and one in the UK led by Dr Elizabeth Clare — came up with the same question at about the same time: Could they identify the animals in an area from DNA that was simply floating in the air? DNA in the air is usually so small that it would take a microscope to see it. “I thought the chances of collecting animal DNA from air would be slim though much time had been spent on it, but we moved on,” said Bohmann who was trying to think of a crazy research idea for a Danish foundation that funds far-out science.

One team collected samples from different locations at Denmark’s Copenhagen Zoo, and the other at Hamerton Zoo Park in the UK. Clearly, they both chose the zoos. “We realized we have the Copenhagen Zoo,” Bohmann recalls. In fact, both the zoos in the UK and Denmark were almost like the zoos that were custom-built for the experiments: The animals in the zoos were non-native, so they really stuck out in DNA analyses. “If we detect a flamingo (火烈鸟), we’re sure it’s not coming from anywhere else but the zoo,” Bohmann says.

In the laboratory, by comparing their samples with examples of DNA from different animals, the scientists succeeded in identifying many different animals at the zoos.

Neither team knew that the other team was working on a similar experiment. The two were nearing submission to a scientific journal when they discovered about the other experiment. Rather than compete to rush out a publication first, they got in touch and decided to publish their findings as a pair. “We both thought the papers are stronger together,” says Clare.

“The next step is to figure out how to take this method into nature to track animals that are hard to spot, including endangered animals,” says Bohmann.

The impact of fast fashion on the environment is significant. Recently Zara, one of the largest fast-fashion retailers (零售商) in the world, put forth a concept that only sustainable fabrics are used in clothing production. But how can Zara ever be sustainable? They produce around 450 million garments (衣服) a year and release 500 new designs a week, about 20,000 a year. Zara’s fast-fashion model has been so successful it has inspired an entire industry to follow them.

Clothing production doubled from 2012 to 2022. The average consumer bought 60 percent more clothing in 2022 than in 2012, but kept each garment half as long. And less than one percent of all clothing produced globally is recycled.

I spend a lot of time reading the corporate social responsibility reports of large brands and interviewing micro-to-small sized enterprises to see how they approach sustainability. The largest significant difference between them is culture.

Small brands focus on creating a culture of sustainability by using strategies like producing made-to-order, so they are not making more than what is sold. Most small brands are opting to work under, an “anti-fashion calendar”. They choose not to follow the intense seasonal calendar that fashion functions under. They do this because waste is one of their biggest concerns. They also design clothing to be of the highest quality, ensuring durability and longevity, so you may keep it longer.

Fast fashion is a “grow or die” business, and the fast-fashion growth model used by all large companies is predicated on limitless growth. Large global corporate retailers are not seeking to change their fundamental business model or create cultures of sustainability. That would require re-working their entire business structure and ultimately hurt their bottom line.

I would start to believe Zara and other large fashion brands had good intentions to fight climate change if they started to look at how to move away from their continuous offerings of weekly new products. They need to introduce alternative sustainable business model practices. One small step could be to offer repair or tailoring services. Tailoring creates clothes that fit perfectly, subsequently increasing their emotional value, so that we love them and keep them longer.