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Big Issues

Eight enviro trends to watch in 2016

January 6, 2016

Mark your calendars – 2016 isn’t just bound to be the hottest year on record, it’s also cooking up all sorts of (mostly) planet-friendly ideas Goodbye, paleo diet; hello, climatarians and reducetarians The New York Times recently talked up “climatarian” as a top new food term to describe anyone whose prime dietary goal is reversing… ReadPreviousNext Post

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Out damned spot! Which natural stain removers actually work?

August 20, 2015

I’m a big-time klutz. My lifelong lack of hand-eye coordination makes me pretty bad at things like baseball, processing physical commands from Zumba instructors and lifting a fork to my mouth without dropping food on my shirt. That last one leads to a lot of defiled clothes, hence this week’s Ecoholic column on stain removers. This is one area where you really need a product… ReadPreviousNext Post

Body

Summer face-off: Citrobug versus mosquitos

July 23, 2015

My friends invited me and two dozen others to camp out at their cottage for a big 40th birthday bash. After my initial reaction (cottage party on a lake, woot!) came the fear factor (oh crap, what kind of northern Canadian bloodsuckers will be swarming and can I track down any DEET-free protection on time?). Two health stores I popped into had… ReadPreviousNext Post

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Fakin’ it: the pros & cons of artificial lawns

June 12, 2015

For eons, anyone committed to slapping down an artificial lawn needed pretty thick skin to withstand a regular dose of snickering, arched eyebrows and mumbled insults from passersby. Of course, today’s synthetic grasses have come a long way, aesthetically speaking, since the early days of Astro Turf, and with California’s crippling drought as well as a rise in lawn pesticide bans, artificial grass sales are… ReadPreviousNext Post

Apparel

Is your “nontoxic” dry cleaner lying to you? A new scorecard slams most “green” cleaners as “greenwash.”

June 11, 2015

With all the “organic,” “eco-friendly” and “nontoxic” claims hanging in dry cleaner windows you’d think you were taking your dress shirt to Whole Foods to have it laundered with baking soda and organic corn starch. Alas, that ain’t the case. A new scorecord from not-for-profit Toronto Environmental Alliance ranks all sorts of dry cleaning chemicals and let… ReadPreviousNext Post

Food

Cookware unscrambled: the latest dish on frying pans

May 27, 2014

This column first appeared in the Mother’s Day issue of Ecoholic in NOW Magazine. Let’s get straight to it… NON-STICK First the good news: Teflon, the most famous of the polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) non-stick coatings, is now being manufactured without the notoriously persistent, suspected human carcinogen PFOA, as the result of U.S. government pressure. However, critics… ReadPreviousNext Post