In 2001, when Earth Rangers was planning for its new facility, the mandate its members gave to the engineers and architects was that they wanted a building with the lowest environmental impact possible, a building on the cutting edge of eco-friendliness. Ten years later, the Earth Rangers Centre is one of the most energy efficient […] More »

That Gideon Forman is an activist should come as no surprise. The child of New York peace activists, he spent his 1960s childhood handing out leaflets around his Greenwich Village home. What is surprising is that this wiry man in his 40s has become one of Canada’s best environmental strategists and led a group of […] More »

A project that would have provided hundreds of Metis with jobs and affordable housing was quashed on Tuesday, with a 7-6 vote by the Edmonton City Council. And though it may not seem so at first glance, that decision was likely for the best. While the project’s benefits were appealing, there were some deeper problems with […] More »

[This article has been updated since its early March 2011 publication; please see 5th paragraph] Imagine a major Canadian city fortunate enough to have both an old-growth forest and wetlands, rich in biodiversity and rare habitats, covering an area almost three times larger than Vancouver’s Stanley Park. Now picture chunks of it bulldozed for subdivisions […] More »

The Claim Last June, the governmental Canadian General Standards Board released proposed standards for organic salmon farming. The goal: to overcome trade barriers and help develop niche markets. But will that organic sticker really mean organic-quality farmed fish, or is it just covering up some nasty production practices? The Investigation Though the standards board is […] More »

The Claim All-natural wood- and corn-based cat litter is a better, greener alternative to traditional clay cat litter. Not only is it biodegradable, but pet owners can flush kitty’s mess down the toilet without getting the guilty conscience that comes with adding a plastic bag per day to already overflowing landfills. But could cat poop […] More »

The Claim Supporters of “upcycling”— turning garbage into funky purses, photo frames, jewelry, and more—say it’s a great way to minimize what’s going into our mountainous landfills. But just how truly green is this practice? The Investigation One company that’s been making waves in the world of upcycling is TerraCycle. Partenered with such big businesses […] More »

Stories of Colony Collapse Disorder swarmed the mainstream media in 2006. Report after report claimed pollinating bees were dying en masse, abandoning their hives, and putting our entire modern food system at risk. Today we rarely hear about CCD, even though the number of bee colonies that survive each winter continue to drop at abnormal rates. […] More »

As of today it’s official: every province and territory across Canada is on board with the 350.org climate movement. This Sunday, 350.org events will be held throughout Canada and around the world. Last year, we saw the beginning of this movement. On Oct. 24th, 2009, several thousand youth took over Parliament Hill in Ottawa to give […] More »

The billions of dollars and years of research that NASA has spent studying Mars may have finally yielded some results here on Earth. Earlier this year, NASA scientists told the UN water conference in Egypt that they could use radar technology originally developed to search for water beneath Mars’ surface to find H2O buried up […] More »

Compiled by Kevin Philipupillai and Simon Wallace Parliament resumes today.  Over the next few weeks we’re going to hear a lot about the gun registry and the census and the economy and the economy and the economy.  Often overlooked are the small, less flashy, things that parliamentarians do. Like propose private member’s bills, legislation that individual MPs […] More »