All Hallows' Eve is quickly approaching, and as we get closer to the spookiest night of the year, talk about Halloween costumes is everywhere. Store-bought costumes may seem like an easy solution if you don't have a lot of extra time on your hands, but they're rarely as interesting as homemade ideas, and they're not so great for the environment.Many store-bought costumes bear a huge carbon footprint. Not only are most .....

There's a picture that has been branded on my brain: A farm worker spraying fields with pesticides; he's wearing a contamination suit and a gas mask. I remember being shocked when I first saw the image. I associated that sort of get-up with highly contagious viruses and industrial chemical leaks—not food. It was in that moment that I started to really worry about pesticide residue on the foods I eat.Webs .....

The holidays are a time of joy and sharing, a time spent with friends and family. Of course, they're also a time of excess and waste. According to the City of Chicago, household waste jumps 25 percent during the period between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day. In the United States alone, used gift-wrap and shopping bags weight in at 4 m .....

A good swap is a wonderful thing. You save money, get rid of things you no longer use, acquire something you can use, and help the planet by reducing the need for new products and preventing items from ending up in the waste stream. And if there aren't a lot of swaps in your area, Swap.com is a fantastic option. Swap.com has t .....

We all have some: Gift bags that have been reused, but have a tear or are generally looking too rough around the edges for another use. It may seem like time to toss them in the recycling bin, but many single-use gift bags is they have a plastic coating, meaning they can't be recycled.The good news is that even when a gift bag has outlived its intended purpose, it can .....

Obesity is a growing problem around the world, and it's a critical problem here in the United States. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates nearly 27 percent of American adults are obese, and CDC data indicates obesity rates continue to rise.As if excess weight weren't complicated enough, obesit .....

2010 is the year of the tiger and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) is pulling out all the stops in a Year of the Tiger campaign aimed at saving the endangered cat. With as few as 3,200 tigers left in existence, WWF has embarked on an ambitious plan to double the number of tigers in the wild by 2022, the next Year of the Tiger—and you donate $10 towards the effort with a simple text.Al .....

Nature has an immense power to heal, and an interesting trend is building among veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan: some are turning to the land to heal the emotional damage wrought by war.The concept of farming as therapy for vets was featured at the Coalition for Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans conference earlier this summer. Adam Burke spoke about the healing nature of developing a blueberry far .....

Companies have gone to great lengths to appear green, even if they aren't. Greenwashing is common, and it's not always easy for consumers to figure out if a product is truly eco-friendly. Enter the GreenwashingIndex.com, a website that helps consumers learn how to separate the truly green companies from the greenwashers.A joint venture betwee .....

Water is a precious commodity, and Americans and Canadians use more water per capita than people in any other part of the world. A lot of the water we use is wasted, but you can save a lot of water between simple adjustments and water-saving fixtures and appliances.Here are just some of the ways you can .....