Forget Cremation, Get Eaten When You Die

- Adam Clare

hands

You will die. It’ll happen to everyone, yet too often people don’t think about the practical aspects in advance. One often overlooked question is what to do with your body when you’re done with it. In North America popular ways to be rid of one’s body are cremation (which requires oodles of energy and is quite bad for the planet), and displaying the corpse (which is requires oodles of chemicals that are bad for the planet). A safe, clean, and fast way to help bodies decompose is a burial container filled with mushrooms and it’s now available in Canada.

“If you compare it to wood [coffins] or even metal, those things take decades. And here, we’re talking about days or months,” he explained to me from Delft, in the Netherlands. On its website, Loop Biotech claims the coffin adds to the “biodiversity of the soil” around it as it degrades, and Hendrikx says other coffins may also contain chemical additives that could leach into the soil. Hendrikx estimates Loop Biotech has sold more than 2,000 cocoons in Europe, and has just started in North America.
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Valentine, also on the board of the Green Burial Society of Canada, sees natural burials as inclusive of different family rituals and desires, but can be as simple as burying a body in a shroud and ensuring native grasses and plants grow above. What’s more, an environmentally conscious death doesn’t need to be about measuring emissions.

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Eat More Veggies to Help the Economy

- Adam Clare

If you still ear meat you may be sick of hearing that cutting out meat is good for your diet, health, and particularly good for the planet. If none of those reasons weren’t enough to convince to give up the flesh then maybe saving money will do it:

  • This 2022 study in Portugal found that vegan consumers spent the least among the groups examined.
  • A 2025 Austrian study found that vegan diets can save up to 41% of shopping costs (225 euros) for a family of four.
  • This 2021 German study found that monthly grocery bills for vegans cost 91 euros less compared to omnivorous diets, or about 11% less.

What’s more, getting people to switch to plant based proteins can make national economies more robust and better performing:

  • This 2023 Nature study found that “a dietary shift away from animal-sourced foods could greatly reduce these ‘hidden’ costs, saving up to $7.3 trillion worth of production-related health burden and ecosystem degradation while curbing carbon emissions.”
  • This 2016 study found that a global shift away from animal products could save “1–31 trillion US dollars, which is equivalent to 0.4–13% of global gross domestic product (GDP) in 2050.”
  • This 2020 FAO report found that vegan diets could avoid $ 1.3 trillion in healthcare-related costs and between $0.8 and $1.3 trillion in climate change emissions mitigation. Bonus, the report found that “a vegan diet could save “13.7 (7.9-19.4) million avoidable deaths globally in 2030.”
  • This 2024 report estimates that the NHS (England’s National Health Service) could save £2.2 billion in medical fees if the British population ate meat-free for weekday lunches.
  • This 2024 report estimates that factory farming costs British taxpayers over £1.2 billion annually, in the form of subsidies, environmental pollution, respiratory illnesses, and lost farming jobs.
  • A 2023 UK preprint estimates that if everyone in the UK adopted a plant-based diet, the NHS would save a total of £6.7 billion per year.

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Solar Soars Above Coal as World’s Biggest Source of Electricity

- Adam Clare

Solar panels on grass

Believe it or not there are places love coal so much that they seem to despise their citizen’s health and wellbeing. The rest of the world is moving to renewables rather quickly and this year marks is the first that solar is now the biggest single source of electricity. That’s right: just one source of renewable electricity has overtaken the most harmful source of electricity. The future is 100% renewable!

Solar power delivered the lion’s share of growth, meeting 83% of the increase in electricity demand. It has now been the largest source of new electricity globally for three years in a row.

Most solar generation (58%) is now in lower-income countries, many of which have seen explosive growth in recent years.

That’s thanks to spectacular reductions in cost. Solar has seen prices fall a staggering 99.9% since 1975 and is now so cheap that large markets for solar can emerge in a country in the space of a single year, especially where grid electricity is expensive and unreliable, says Ember.

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Want Above Average Intelligence? Study Philosophy

- Adam Clare

steaming mug

The humanities have been pushed to side due to the praise and perceived wealth that STEM education gets. This is not good for a vibrant and diverse society as the humanities provide people with knowledge that can expand minds and sway cultures. The field of philosophy is one such domain that provides people new ways of thinking, and a multitude of ways to question their own thoughts and those of others. Philosophy means practicing logic and exploring new ideas, which is perfect for setting people up for success in a world of information.

In a world filled with lies and other misinformation, content generated by AI, and malicious state actors swaying geopolitics, it’s more important than ever to posses critical thinking kills that studying philosophy provides.

According to the University of Illinois, the average salary for a philosophy graduate who finds work within six months of graduation is $60,069. This puts them above economics majors and just below physics majors. Other sources report similar figures.

They also enjoy a respectable increase when one considers mid-career earnings. The median philosophy major can expect to earn a salary of more than $80,000. This is higher than that earned by business management or chemistry majors. And according to data from Payscale, those with only an undergraduate degree in philosophy rank 16th for mid-career median earnings.

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Simply Ditching Your Car Saves Money

- Adam Clare

Graph showing average monthly car ownership costs $1370 CAD

Cars are a burden that suck money out of your wallet and dump pollutants onto the streets (yes, even electric cars cause harm). So why dod people use them? Frugal people already know that owning a car equates to a mobile money pit and have looked for more fiscally prudent solutions. If you live a city then you have a multitude of options to get around, those stuck in the suburbs or rural areas are more limited. Still, you can look into car sharing programs and can even reduce the amount you use your car to save money.

The TTC charges $156 for an adult monthly pass. Bike Share Toronto charges $105 plus HST for an annual pass that includes unlimited 30-minute rides. Then there are car-sharing services like Communauto, which offers free monthly membership plans and charges from $13 per hour for a car rental.

If you’re thinking about going car-free, it’s a good idea to tally up exactly how much you spent on owing a car in the past year (including maintenance and repair costs) to see how much you could potentially save and reinvest elsewhere to pay off debts, contribute to an RRSP or reach other financial goals.

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