Sustainability : Featured Stories

Lara Bazant's ethical jewelry business is the perfect combination of intricate design, fair trade materials and chemical-free processes. With a varied background and extensive travel, she also chose Toronto to set up her growing business.

The Virginia Opossum, or Didelphis virginiana, has moved into the GTA and is turning up in backyards, ravines and parks. This new character on the scene, our first marsupial, seems to be fitting into the local flora and fauna just fine.

Sketch creates art-making opportunities for young people who are street-involved and homeless, giving them new career choices. Unexpectedly, there's also a green thumb element to their brand of creativity. Take a peek at our video and watch what's going on.

As plug-in vehicles become more popular, industry players in Ontario are discovering that information about electricity use is as valuable as electricity itself and are working to ensure a seamless introduction of the vehicles onto our streets.

Erica Lemieux wants to bring trust back to the food system. Under the auspices of her start-up urban farming company, she aims to show that pedal-powered, small-plot farming is healthy, economically viable and good for Toronto's biodiversity.

In May of each year canoeists take to the Don River and paddle 10km through Toronto's urban wilderness from Don Mills to the Keating Channel. Yonge Street's videographer Darren Alexander floated along for the ride, and so can you.

Launched in 2009, Ontario's Green Energy Act has seen its share of brown-outs. A World Trade Organization dispute, an inadequate infrastructure, and a vocal anti-wind lobby have all caused problems. But, even still, new green jobs are coming on stream in the GTA and elsewhere in Ontario.

Home building and renovations don't have to have a big human and ecological footprint. Kay Valley channels her creativity and passion for human rights and the environment into The Zero Point, her design centre and building supply store on Queen Street East.

A GTA-based battery manufacturer gets revved up to supply the new wave of electric cars about to hit the streets. With over 150 patents to their name, Electrovaya is poised to take a profitable role in not just e-car battery production, but lead the way with a zero emission, non-solvent and non-toxic manufacturing process.

With its new Toronto education center, Better Place aims to convince drivers that recharging an electric vehicle is as easy as topping up your cell phone credit. It's an early step in making EVs an everyday part of Toronto and Ontario transportation options.

What do you think of as ugly? Michael McClelland and Toronto's E.R.A. Architects are challenging our assumptions about life in high-rise buildings.  Their research on tower housing questions our underlying cliches, and their conclusions and ideas are now spreading across Canada and the United States.

The University of Toronto and Hart House are about to turn their gym into a power plant, but instead of coal or nuclear fuel, it'll be the muscle and sweat of people using the stationary bikes that will be putting electricity back into the grid. Fit bodies lead to green energy.

Not your average laundromat, the Eco Laundry Room on Toronto's Danforth Avenue is an innovative example of how to "green" an established business model. It's also a nice place to hang out as an informal community centre.

Yonge Street's Bert Archer recently sat down with Ontario's new Minister of Research and Innovation, Glen Murray, to talk about urbanism, sustainable transportation and technological and social innovation in and around Toronto.

ECOexecutives, a new program at the Toronto Zoo, is getting executives out of their boardrooms and into the company of polar bears, arctic wolves, caribou and other creatures that will reignite their passion for animals and environmental issues.