BY: ZOE MELNYK After years of disappointment in their government’s environmental policies, 886 Dutch citizens, following the lead of the sustainability foundation Urgenda, took their government to court in order to demand a better treatment of the environment and to…
Cabo Polonio is a completely off-grid village of hippies, fishermen and star gazers
BY: MATTHEW CHIN In Cabo Polonio, located on the eastern coast of Uruguay, sits the perfect beachfront getaway that is completely off the grid. The remote village dates back to the 1960s, where hippies, squatters, and fishermen have been building…
Doing Laughter Yoga with complete strangers was awkwardly enlightening
BY: MOLLY SANDERS They say laughter is the best medicine. But even in the funniest of life’s memorable moments, a good tear-jerking laugh lasts a couple of minutes at most; it’s a very temporary high. Enter laughter yoga, or Hasyayoga:…
Europe’s largest living wall contains 97,000 plants
BY: JESSICA BEUKER A 446-space parking garage is now home to Europe’s largest living wall. The wall contains 97,000 plants drawn from 20 different species chosen specifically to provide environmental benefits. According to Gizmag, the plants are tailored to do…
Extreme mountain camping and tree tents are the solution to your adventure-lust
BY: JESSICA BEUKER Most people get queasy looking over the edge of a balcony on a tall building. Fortunately, professional free climbers Tommy Caldwell and his wife Becca, are not most people. They are adventurers and extreme campers, facing cliffs…
Fast fashion companies treat human lives the same way we treat their cheap consumables
BY: LAURA ROJAS I walk through Toronto’s Yonge and Dundas at least once a week, obscured by the shadow of towering H&M billboards showing beautiful people wearing beautiful clothes, a large “2 for $10” sign reeling every passerby inside.…
Here are 5 things you can do about Earth’s sixth mass extinction (being afraid isn’t one)
BY: JESSICA BEUKER Recently my newsfeed and computer screen have been attempting to scare me. I’ve been flooded by headlines and stories that read, “Earth’s sixth mass extinction has begun and it’s all our faults.” Some read “Humans under threat,”…
We Wish We Lived in These 5 Extraordinary Places
BY: THE PLAID ZEBRA All of these locations are Plaid Zebra certified with creative, forward-thinking initiatives that make them incredible spots to call home. 1. Finland—The country with the world’s most wildly progressive education system Finland is often looked up…
5 disturbing drugs that you never wanted to know about
BY: JESSICA BEUKER We’ve all been subjected to that terrible ‘This is your brain on drugs’ video where they fry an egg. The only thing that video ever did was make me hungry for breakfast food. In my opinion, if…
Skinny jeans refuse to die and they are killing your nerves
BY: DANIEL KORN Skinny jeans have always been pretty ridiculous. I’m not going to be so naïve as to say that they don’t look good; heck, I tried on a pair in high school once, but my stocky build and…
Why Instagram celebrities condemning the Yulin Dog Meat Festival is the irony of the century
BY: ROB HOFFMAN Who’s to blame for a city that kills 10,000 dogs a year in the name of a good meal and celebrating the onset of summer? The most shocking aspect of the Yulin Festival celebration founded in 2009…
Elon Musk and SpaceX want you to design the tube transportation system from Futurama
BY: DANIEL KORN Futurama—at least its original four season run—does exactly what good science fiction should do—comment on our present by exploring our possible future. One of the show’s many plausible ideas is the transport system that the main characters…
A biotech start-up is thwarting poachers by flooding the market with fake rhino horns
BY: JESSICA BEUKER It’s no secret that rhinos are in trouble. In Africa alone, the rhino population has dropped 96 per cent in the last 50 years. The main reason behind rhino slaughter is the high demand for rhino horn,…
Graham crackers were invented by a Christian pastor to stop you from masturbating
BY: DANIEL KORN Ah, graham crackers – perfect for s’mores, cheesecakes, and the systematic repression of everyday sexual desires. At least, that was the intention. The namesake of the graham cracker—Sylvester Graham—was a Presbyterian reverend active in the early 1800s…
This UK grocery store saves £140,000 per year by being powered entirely on food waste
BY: LAURA ROJAS Founded in 1869, Sainsbury’s in the UK is a large-scale grocery store chain that has vowed to do away with conventional business practices in exchange for more sustainable ideas. In 2011, their Hyde store in Kent became…
This website combines Airbnb with camping to satisfy your wallet and your wanderlust
Playing on the frustration of high commercial camping costs, and the even greater aggravation of being kicked off of public land, HomeCamp allows campers to rent out a section of privately owned land for cheap. The benefits of HomeCamp are…
NYC is adopting solar green roofs as a part of the public school curriculum
BY: ROB HOFFMAN In Manhattan’s original beatnik neighbourhood of Greenwich Village, New York City public school, PS 41, has developed a rooftop garden and solar panel setup spanning 15,000 square feet. Photo by Carla Brown Vicki Sando, a parent of…
This guy shows you how to build a woodland fortress and make nature your bitch (Video)
An un-named YouTuber under the channel, Primitive Technology, builds a two metre by two metre hut in the woods, using exclusively materials resourced from the small patch of forest. In place of an axe, he uses a sharp stone, and…
Suburban skateboarders turned train hopping heroes crossed America and caught it all on film
BY: ROB HOFFMAN There are few places in the West that capture the raw American spirit like the dark corners of train yards and the open boxcars that run a rough hand across the country’s burning plains. Only a month…
Watch a couple’s New Zealand bus adventure and be instantly overcome with wanderlust
BY: MATTHEW CHIN Joe Herbert and his girlfriend Kaitlin Fewings flew to New Zealand to follow their dream of going on an endless road trip with both good friends and the people they meet along the way. Herbert, 27, bought…