On the days following Donald Trump’s fateful ballot box victory in November, environmental advocates the world over stumbled around shellshocked, feeling the ear-splitting pressure change of a bomb dropped on climate progress months before they’d ever see the fallout. As grief and fear spilled onto social media feeds, one climate leader held space for hope.…
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Big Food is pledging to combat climate change with regenerative soil practices. Will they dig deep enough?
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How automakers can clean up the dirty minerals that power them in the global race to electrify cars
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If you need more signs that the movement against plastic is gaining traction, look no further than last month’s World Petrochemical Conference. Some of the planet’s largest plastic chemical manufacturers gather in Texas every year to discuss advances in technology and industry trends. Last year’s WPC theme was about “cresting the wave” and prospering in…
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A lot of leafy promises were made this past decade. Declarations were signed. Celebratory headlines were written. The world’s chainsaws, you could be forgiven for presuming, were going to let up in unison by 2020 when hundreds of deforestation-free pledges would finally kick in. Continue Reading…
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We come in contact with them every day of our lives. Wedged into wallets, they chronicle the highs and lows of our retail therapy, our mid-afternoon mocha binges and the daily tab for being human in a consumer economy. Turns out common thermal receipts also deliver a dose of estrogen-mimicking chemicals, which is thrusting the…
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Remember the sea turtle with a straw fused up its nose? The viral image that broke your heart and made you swear off straws? There’s more. On February 4, the UK’s RSPCA released the latest round of disturbing photos of wildlife – maimed seals, ducks, deer, even cats – ensnared in plastic bags, bottles and other…
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At a bustling restaurant in downtown Toronto, rumour has it Silicon Valley’s hottest innovation is here somewhere. Not the latest smartphone wedged to a diner’s ear two tables over, but a heaving burger, served up with pickles and special sauce, according the specials board. So, what does this burger do that makes Bill Gates and…
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In a riot of clamouring bottles and backfiring brakes, a week’s worth of your trash gets trucked off to be recycled. It’s all very comforting to those of us who brag that we recycle everything – unless, like half the planet, your town was selling your discards to China. After years of buying over 50…
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By all historical accounts, I should really be a grocer. Both my dad’s dad and my mom’s maternal grandparents owned grocery stores in Montreal back in the day. One in the French Canadian neighbourhood of Rosemont, one a Greek import “emporium”, as my aunt Babs proudly calls it, on lower St. Laurent. That was before…
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You may have noticed my Ecoholic feed has been a little sleepy over the summer. Well, after 15 amazing years of writing for NOW Magazine every week, including 13 years of doing the Ecoholic column, I took the summer mostly off to reboot, play, meditate in the mountains of Guatemala, free my dad’s ashes in the…
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Six months into Donald Trump’s dizzying presidency, Naomi Klein’s back with a new book to shed some light on the real shell game at work. I chat with her about Trump, Trudeau and the fate of the planet – and why the world needs utopic thinking more than ever.
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Bursting buds, sweetly singing birds. After a long, dark winter, this is when we’re all supposed to stop, take a deep breath and smell the roses…or the magnolias, since the roses aren’t technically in bloom yet. Thing is, it’s really difficult to smell the subtle scent of magnolia trees while sprinting full speed to catch a…
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I didn’t intend to make this Earth Day issue entirely about lists and lists of amazing women using their skills and their platforms to make this world a better place. But, hot damn, there are so many women kicking butt in all corners and fields of the green movement. I actually started looking into the status of women…
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Vertical hydroponic towers, Black Out Bulbs, vegan cashew brie…here’s a sampler of some of the businesses I’ll be scoping at GLS this weekend. PS I’ll be there too, speaking Saturday April 8 at 12:30 on the Detox Your Life panel. To win tickets, hop on my…
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This eye-opening documentary follows an international river conservationist around the globe to map the enormous impact of one of the world’s most polluting industries: fashion. Here’s a snippet from my conversation with RiverBlue director David McIlvride.
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Unlike store-bought nut milk, the homemade stuff tastes like dreams. And it’s got no wasteful packaging, no weird fillers, no carrageenan and…
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Scrolling through the constant barrage of bad news in our feeds, most of us tend to react one of two ways: curse a lot more than usual or look for an escape hatch. Surely, there’s got to be an island out there without TVs or Wifi…
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Look around the room you’re in right now. Ninety percent of absolutely everything that surrounds you came by ship. What’s the big deal? Isn’t that better than coming by carbon-spewing planes? You’ll rethink that after seeing the documentary Freightened, screening this weekend at the Planet in Focus Environmental Film Festival. I wrote a short piece on it with…
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Down a gravel driveway, beside an old glass greenhouse and three plastic-sheathed hoop houses bursting with tomatoes and cucumbers, sits a large faded wooden barn. Inside, a handful of farm workers amble in one night a week to debrief, or, more accurately, de-stress. “We do a yoga night Tuesday nights,” says Bethany Klapwyk from under…
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Wherever you first meet Tiffany Pratt – on Instagram, on TV, in the pages of this book or in person – you know a burst of magic has just entered your life. It’s as if you cracked a window and a luminescent gust of glitter blew in on a warm wind then your fairy god-BFF…
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