1 . When Purdue University researchers set out to develop a new paint, the goal was to create one that would reflect sunlight away from a building. It turns out they also set an official Guinness world record for the whitest paint on the planet.

“When we started this project about seven years ago, we had saving energy and fighting climate change in mind,” Professor Xiulin Ruan said.

The paint reflects 98.1% of solar radiation while also emitting infrared (红外线的) heat.

Because the paint absorbs less heat from the sun than it emits, a surface coated with this paint is cooled below the surrounding temperature without consuming power. Typical commercial white paint gets warmer rather than cooler, Paints on the market that are designed to reject heat reflect only 80%-90% of sunlight and can’t make surfaces cooler than their surroundings.

“Conventional air conditioners consume power that is often from burning fossil fuel. Meanwhile, while they move the heat from inside of a house to the outside, they turn the electricity into heat and leave even more heat to the surrounding and earth, further causing a heat island effect and warming up the Earth,” Professor Ruan told IFLScience.

“In contrast, our paint does not consume any power, and directly sends off all the heat to the deep space, thus helping cooling down the Earth. According to a previous model, painting 0.5-1% of the Earth’s surface (roofs, roads, cars, unused land, etc) with our paint will stop the warming trend. Painting many human made-structures would be a great way to fight the climate crisis in many ways. The paint is not yet available commercially and the scientists are working with a commercial company to speed up the paint production and put it on the market.

2 . Can you imagine that there are a huge number of tiny waste pieces in the Arctic (北冰洋的) sea ice? Because of the waste pieces,30,000 kinds of animals are in danger. It’s true that one person’s acts alone can’t help the planet. But each one of us can find ways to make our contributions.

In the home, we could try not to waste foods. Use a digital meal planner to get a right amount of food so that everything we buy and cook gets eaten. Learn how to store foods to keep them fresh longer. Be sure to use proper ways to keep our home warm. For example, we can replace old windows with energy-saving ones.

At the store, we could green our habits. Buy reusable plates, but not single-use ones. Buy home tissue (纸巾) not made of materials which may lead to destruction (破坏) of forests. Buy glass cups instead of paper ones.

In the community, we could help keep its plants healthy. Take part in tree-planting projects or grass-cutting activities to help plants grow well.

Our actions alone can’t save the planet, but the above ways and habits can help.

3 . Buying furniture is easier than ever. You can even order a new table and chairs online without ever leaving home. But did you ever think about how furniture is made? The process begins with trees but now researchers have found a better way: growing it in a lab instead of a forest. Instead of cutting down trees and adding to deforestation, Velasquez-Garcia said, “If you want a table, then you should just grow a table.”

The research group found a way to actually grow plant tissue (组织) — wood and fiber — in a lab that is similar to the way cultured meat is grown. While there is still a long way to go to actually grow a table, the team was able to grow structures from cells from zinnia leaves.

Making furniture and other items from biomaterials could eliminate cutting down trees in forests. “The way we get these materials hasn’t changed in centuries and is very inefficient,” said Velasquez-Garcia. “This is a real chance to avoid all that inefficiency.”

There are other benefits to using lab wood too. Lab grown wood can be handled to take on any shape — like 3 D printing — so it may be possible to build a table without glue or screwing parts together.

Beckwith, a mechanical engineering PhD student, was inspired by a visit to a farm to try to make land-use more efficient and environmentally sound. “That got me thinking: Can we be more strategic (战略上的) about what we’re getting out of our process? Can we get more yield for our inputs?” she told MIT News. “I wanted to find a more efficient way to use land and resources so that we could let more farmlands remain wild, or to remain lower production but allow for greater biodiversity.”

Today, the two largest uses of trees are to make wood products and paper. When new biomaterials become readily available, forests will lose their economic value and will be preserved for their environmental, health, and recreational value. These researchers, like Velasquez-Garcia, are speaking for the trees.