The first pairs of jeans were designed for blue-collar workers. Over the course of the 20th century, the working-class pants have transformed into fashion icons and become popular around the world. However, each new pair you buy has a much higher cost than you might think.

Every pair of jeans takes about 0.7 kilograms of cotton. Growing this much cotton requires roughly 10,000 liters of water, not to mention various herbicides and pesticides, which can pollute groundwater. Typically, plastic fibers are mixed with cotton threads to increase comfort and flexibility. In order to dye the cloth, chemical sprays and several cycles of acid-washing are adopted, discharging toxic pollutants into rivers and even turn them into indigo-blue. Also, there are the zippers, buttons, and rivets made of copper and other metals, whose mining is yet another source of environmental degradation. All in all, the manufacturing (制造) process for a single pair of jeans emits over 33 kilograms of carbon — the equivalent of driving over 110 kilometers.

Like many globally produced products, jeans are made in poor countries and bought in rich ones. Much of the world’s cotton is grown in developing countries, with poor labor practices and few protections for workers. Cotton here is often picked by children or forced labor. And their health may be threatened by poisonous chemicals during production. Because of the fast-paced and rough manufacturing with unnatural materials, today, most pairs last no longer than a year. Like most waste, discarded jeans end up in landfills, where their decomposition releases greenhouse gas. Some governments are pursuing policies to make companies more responsible for worker pay and welfare, but unsustainable practices still run crazy throughout the fashion industry.

Esther Peiarrubia,41, her partner, and their two children have fully developed a zero-waste lifestyle, going weeks without throwing away a single bit of rubbish. Over the past month, the mum has only been forced to chuck a balloon from a party, an old T-shirt that she had used to clean shoes, and a broken toy.

The family, who live in Girona, Catalonia, decided to go more minimal when they moved house, and from that day began buying everything they needed in quantity or from second-hand shops. “There are already reusable things that we would have to buy once, so it would be a waste of time and money buying the single-use ones,” said Esther. Any kitchen leftovers go into the compost (堆肥) bin, and glass containers are washed up and repurposed for something else. Esther tries not to buy any plastic at all, but when she does, like in the five-litre bottle of olive oil that lasts a few months, it gets thoroughly washed and recycled.

Her five-and seven-year-old children know to draw and make crafts from used paper packaging, before that is recycled too. Esther has also found herself in a community of friends who trade things with each other that they need, like furniture or plates, communicating in WhatsApp groups. They also tend to organize family activities as gifts, like a cinema trip, or buy them second-hand things.

To help educate her kids, Esther takes them out on nature walks to the forest, where they pick up rubbish as they go. “They use their little gloves and enjoy this activity, because they know it’s better for the environment,” she said. They also take books out of the library on climate change and plastic that they read all together.

Esther hopes that by sharing her lifestyle, she’ll help to convince other people to join in the zero-waste movement. She’s keen to reassure (使安心) people that the lifestyle really isn’t as difficult or expensive as they might imagine.

Until 13, Parker Liautaud was an ordinary kid. That changed after he met polar explorer Robert Swan. They began an email correspondence which turned into a friendship that eventually saw the then 14-year-old invited to join a trip to the Antarctic. He said yes almost instantly. Friends and family, to whom he’d so far shown no particular interest in outdoor activities,particularly polar ones, were thrown into total confusion. He ate lots of chicken, spent a long time in the gym,and proved them wrong.

The following year, Liautaud put forward a more ambitious plan: to become the youngest-ever person to go to the North Pole. He found a new partner, Doug Stoup,and through a mixture of charm and luck raised the roughly $150,000 needed for the record attempt. Then disaster struck. The early months of the year, when the two set out, were among the warmest on record. The North Pole, which is essentially a GPS location on a constantly-floating collection of ice sheets,became virtually inaccessible, surrounded by pieces of uncovered ocean.

A trip which had been intended to raise awareness of melting ice caps was delayed by melting ice caps. “We would get up, battle through these difficult conditions for 150 hours, then wake up the next morning and find that we were further away from the Pole than we’d started the previous morning,”he said. After 14 days’ trying, they admitted defeat.

Liautaud came home and decided to try again the next spring. Conditions were cold but perfect, and he and Stoup reached the Pole in no time. While it might not have made Liautaud the youngest North-Poler, the success did fulfil his original intention, giving him a platform to continue promotion against climate change, through his campaigning website. His view is that it’s his generation that must make the greatest effort to reduce carbon emissions. He has already contributed to research projects carried out by the International Atomic Energy Agency and will soon set up two stations to record weather data.