It’s well known that meat production has a large carbon footprint. A diet that includes meat requires more land than a plant based diet so even decreasing the amount of meat one eats can be a good thing. Some fans of vegetarian diets have created the Vegetarian Calculator that lets
Continue readingTag: Direct Action
Things Are Good: How to Get Out From the Invasive PRISM Surveillance Program
Thanks to the brave efforts from Edward Snowden we are now aware of something long suspected: that the USA (and many other nations including Canada) are reading our communications. The program is called PRISM and it monitors your communication. Basically, if you connect to the internet or use a mobile
Continue readingThings Are Good: Do You Make the World Better? There’s an App for That
By now most people have heard what a carbon footprint is, but have you heard about your gloabl ‘handprint‘? The notion is that it’s the opposite of a negative counter of your impacts on the planet. Handprints are recorded online or on your phone as you make little (or big)
Continue readingThings Are Good: Plants Which Clean the Air
Ever wanted to have really fresh air in your place? This TED Talk by Kamal Meattle provides some insight into which plants you should have in your home and what element the clean in the air. I’m going to try this out in my home.
Continue readingThings Are Good: Get Help Choosing an Ethical Career
80,000 Hours is a student run organization at Oxford University that helps people find a job or career in something that makes the world better. This is great for so many obvious reasons – but the one I love the most is that it shows how philosophy can be applied
Continue readingArt Threat: Friday Film Pick: Blockadia Rising: Voices of the Tar Sands Blockade
This week’s FFP is a new one-hour documentary by Garrett Graham (in collaboration with the Tar Sands Blockade) about the direct action efforts of activists in Texas, who try to stop construction of the planned Alberta tar sands pipeline. There is some seriously heavy-handed narration at the beginning, but if
Continue readingThings Are Good: Use Buycott to Support Companies Which do Good
Most people are familiar with the concept of a boycott to punish companies who do negative things by not buying their goods or services. The opposite of that is a new app called Buycott which helps you buy from companies who you ideologically support. I’ve been using the app for
Continue readingThings Are Good: 3D Printing for Peace
3D printing got a lot of attention recently because an American organization found a way to print a handgun. A direct reaction to that has been to launch a contest to promote the true potential of 3D printing by having a contest which encourages people to create designs that better
Continue readingThings Are Good: Greenpeace Launches Wikileaks Inspired Site
Wikileaks has been a great source of information that governments and corporations wanted to deny or keep secret. Now Greenpeace has modelled a site, Arctic Truth, for whistleblowers who work in the world of arctic drilling for oil. As climate change turns the frozen north into accessible waters oil companies
Continue readingThings Are Good: A Proposal to Label Gas Nozzles
The overwhelming majority of personal cars use planet-killing, people-damaging, production-intesnive engines that consume a product that literally kills us. Most everyone understands this at some level, but it seems they don’t connect their fuel consumption with world hunger, polar bears dying, or even smog. A new organization in Toronto wants
Continue readingThings Are Good: Earth Rangers Wants You to Bring Back the Wild
Earth Rangers is a conservation organization focused on getting kids engaged in protecting and learning about the environment. They have a program currently focused on having kids actively engage in protecting wildlife and their ecosystems. Earth Day happens later this month but there’s no reason why you can’t be thinking
Continue readingThings Are Good: People Recycle More in Green Buildings
Researchers at UBC have studied the recycling behaviour of people who work in green buildings to those who don’t and found that – regardless of their past habits – people in green buildings recycle more. This is really nifty because it proves that design of an interior space alone can
Continue readingThings Are Good: Portable Planetarium Brings Space to Kids
The Peterborough Planetarium has been started by just two people with the primary goal to bring an excitement of space and our global environment to kids in Ontario. Being a big fan of outer space and the planet Earth, I think this is great! Their goal is to introduce kids
Continue readingThings Are Good: James Dyson Award Expands Prizes, Open for Entries
SafetyNet from Dan Watson on Vimeo. The James Dyson Award is an award for engineers and designers to encourage the creation of new devices that make the world a better place. A good example of what they are looking for is last year’s winner, SafetyNet, in the video above. The
Continue readingThings Are Good: EcoParent Online for Helpful Eco-Tips
EcoParent Magazine is all about raising children in an environmentally-friendly way while inspiring respect for the planet. The site currently has a range of tips and information ranging from edible gardening to greener home computing. From their site: Through our quarterly print magazine and our website (among our other activities),
Continue readingThings Are Good: Canadians Want Science to be Free
Scientists in Canada have come under attack and censorship under the federal Conservative government and Canadians want that to change. Science Uncensored is a new organization focused on ensuring that research funded by the government is freely available to Canadians and that the government stop censoring research results. In the
Continue readingThings Are Good: Crowdfunding for Political Change
Sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo have changed the way some projects get funding by using contributions from individuals on a large scale. There have been many art projects and products that have come into existence thanks to this new trend in crowdfunding. Todd Aalgaard has wondered if crowdfunding can be
Continue readingThings Are Good: Get Rid of Stuff, Do What You Love
Often we hear that spending on experiences make for a happier life than buying into consumerism. In concept it sounds great, but many people think that it’s hard to rejig their life to be focused on doing things rather than consuming things. This TED talk is about breaking free of
Continue readingThings Are Good: Environmental Education Improving in Ontario
Teaching people about the environment makes a lot of sense since we live in it. Surprisingly, in many school systems knowledge and awareness about the environment is not shared. In Toronto, Evergreen has been working for years to make the environment important in education. Their efforts are paying off as
Continue readingThings Are Good: Skateboarders Help Transform Urban Environments
Skateboarding culture is often (wrongly) lumped together with criminal behaviour amongst youth. To those that still think that way, you should check out a study in the most recent Local Environment: The International Journal of Justice and Sustainability. By looking at what young skateboarders would do in the city of
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