Bio
Adria Vasil is one of Canada’s leading environmental journalists, with more than two decades of experience in sustainability reporting and a trio of bestselling books on green living. The longtime “Ecoholic” columnist was the managing editor at Corporate Knights sustainable economy magazine from 2019 to 2025. The former lecturer with Toronto Metropolitan University’s School of Journalism lives in the east end of Toronto with her spouse and their cat.
Adria is currently on sabbatical.
Journalism, books and awards
Adria started as a staff news writer Toronto’s NOW Magazine largely writing about corporate irresponsibility when she launched the popular Ecoholic column in early 2004. Ecoholic began as a green advice column and later became a mash-up of green news, interviews and brutally honest green product reviews. Vintage Press/Randomhouse turned her weekly column into a series of bestselling books. She published four books under the Ecoholic banner: Ecoholic (2007), Ecoholic Home (2009), Ecoholic US edition (2009/Norton) and Ecoholic Body (2012). She went on to run Corporate Knights magazine from 2019 through May 2025, shaping sustainable economy news that was circulated in the Globe & Mail, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal.
In October 2025, Adria was named one of Canada’s Clean50 award honourees for 2026 in recognition of her leadership in sustainability journalism in Canada while at Corporate Knights. As the Clean50 noted, “Adria has built her career scrutinizing glossy sustainability claims and demanding accountability, turning up the heat on empty promises and elevating real solutions. Beyond exposing superficial claims, she led solutions-focused reporting, spotlighted plant-based climate solutions, Indigenous knowledge, systemic decarbonization strategies, and amplified young sustainability leaders. Her editorial leadership cemented Corporate Knights’ reputation as a platform that both empowers readers with knowledge, and pressures corporations to raise environmental standards.”
My story
As a former green living columnist, I would often joke that I was raised on an organic goat farm in Quebec by a commune of earth-loving hippies. The truth was quite the opposite. My Greek Canadian dad and French Canadian mom moved us from Montreal to the aluminum-smelting industrial town of Shawinigan when I was a kid, not to open up a health food store but a McDonald’s. Admittedly, steady access to milkshakes was nirvana to a 5-year-old, oblivious to the vinyl chloride factory and chemical plant up the street. My family ended up moving back to Montreal in the late ’80s at a time when shit was hitting the fan for the planet. The Exxon Valdez oil spill, the hole in the ozone layer, acid rain. Watching it all unfold on the nightly news with my news junkie dad changed me. By the time we moved to Toronto when I was 15, I had given up meat and grown obsessed with the hidden impacts of our everyday products. Were they tested on animals? Made in a sweatshop? Screwing up the planet? After I earned my degree in political science from the University of Toronto in the late 90s, I threw myself into the non-profit world researching Canadian corporate abuses in developing countries. I was in a planning meeting jamming about how we were going to get the media to write about one of our anti-sweatshop campaigns when I decided to go back to school to became a journalist to draw attention to issues I felt were being underreported. I went on to obtain a post-graduate degree in journalism from Ryerson University (now Toronto Metropolitan University) while working at NOW Magazine.
My biggest influence: My brother Nick was my family’s original environmentalist and health guru. When I was a young teen, he started working for Greenpeace Montreal and began bringing home all sorts of flyers and stickers on saving the world, which I promptly plastered everywhere. Nick later developed pretty heavy duty health problems, including environmental and chemical sensitivities. He became a canary in the coal mine, picking up on all sorts of pollutants that most of us couldn’t detect. He unplugged as best he could, studying herbalism, holistic nutrition, and permaculture, all of which informed chapters of my Ecoholic Body book, largely written after he died in 2010. In everything he did, the longtime meditator showed me how to live more mindfully. Though it wasn’t until after he passed that I dove into meditation. I’ve been curious about the intersection of mindfulness and sustainability ever since, a theme you’ll see reflected in many of my articles and paintings.
