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… ◂ReadPreviousNext Post▸

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… ◂ReadPreviousNext Post▸

What do your gym shorts, cat food and oil tankers have in common? They’re all making a mess of the planet’s life-sustaining oceans. Here’s how you can do your part at the grocery store, in your laundry room and when tweeting your MP to prevent rampant overfishing, oil spills, microplastics and climate change. ◂ReadPreviousNext Post▸

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▸

I didn’t grow up in a canning family. My mom is an awesome home cook but just didn’t get that canning ‘n preserving gene, even though her dad came from a farm family of 18 – yes, 18 –  kids in Ste. Justine, Quebec, one that no doubt survived on lots of farm-canned goods. Her sister,… ◂ReadPreviousNext Post▸

It may no longer be patio season in these here parts but on a warm sunny Canadian Thanksgiving weekend, but I did get off my ass and finally stain and seal the sectional my man and I built back when it was still summer.  Now that it’s complete, I figured I’d share a little ‘don’t worry, summer will be back’ inspiration… ◂ReadPreviousNext Post▸

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▸

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▸

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▸

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▸

Unless you daydream of renos or watch way too much HGTV you probably don’t spend much time thinking about your floors. Turns out there’s a lot of dirt lurking underfoot, regardless of whether you’re sweeping daily or not. Check out my tips on avoiding hidden toxins, phoney promises, illegal lumber and more. ◂ReadPreviousNext Post▸

Tossing and turning and in the market for a new mattress? I’ve gotten a lot of questions from readers lately inquiring about “least toxic” mattress options and most have them have been plain confused about what mattress is legitimately green. The world of green claims is always a bit of a wild west, but mattress companies… ◂ReadPreviousNext Post▸

If you’re a super talented crafter then the holiday season is brimming with possibilities. But what about the rest of us? I’m about the furthest person from Martha Stewart on the face of the earth so when I craft, it’s got to be fast, easy, with minimal actual skill needed.  That means you don’t have to know how… ◂ReadPreviousNext Post▸

The summer after 9th grade, my parents moved my little brother Mark and I from Montreal to suburban Mississauga, a gaping 35 kilometres from downtown Toronto. Back in Montreal, I was used to taking the city bus to school downtown and subwaying around to meet friends. In Mississauga, I quickly figured out you’d have to… ◂ReadPreviousNext Post▸

There’s something about growing up in Canada that makes us want to just open up the taps and let the water flow free like the wind. I distinctly remember being 11/12 years old and taking 45 MINUTE long showers without a second thought (I probably cycled through a whole small lake in that time!). Maybe… ◂ReadPreviousNext Post▸

I’ve been writing the Ecoholic column for, oh, a decade now (actually it was just Ecoholic’s 10 year anniversary!) and some questions trickle in again and again in my inbox. Probably one of the most common reader Qs I get is about water filters. I write about them every few years but the thirst for… ◂ReadPreviousNext Post▸

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▸

Back in the day (as in up until, oh, a year ago), Ecoholic used to be a straight up green advice column. Every week readers wrote in with questions and I’d answer them in Q&A format. We’ve changed things up since then (mixing in product guides, nature notes, greenwash of the week, green finds of… ◂ReadPreviousNext Post▸

Some people dream in technicolour, I dream in solar panels. Well, not every night or anything, I’m not a lunatic. I’m still saving for a house clad with shiny blue panels (oh wouldn’t it be awesome to go off-grid and never pay a utility bill again?). In the meantime, I’ve got a little guide here… ◂ReadPreviousNext Post▸

Maybe it’s the defiant Montrealer in me, but I really don’t mind a -30 day as long as the sun is beaming down from its blue sky perch. Of course, it helps if you’re tucked warmly inside. Okay, maybe that doesn’t count as a true love of the cold, but I’ll take icy blue skies… ◂ReadPreviousNext Post▸

My family stopped exchanging Christmas gifts a good 15 years ago. My sister, in med school at the time, told us she just didn’t have time to shop for us (pshaw, what an excuse!). And just like that, the whole card castle crumbled and we gave up the whole swapping tradition ever since.  Instead, we… ◂ReadPreviousNext Post▸