Rate Your Landlord

- Adam Clare

ai image of a banker building a house

Landlords run a business that profits off a basic human need: shelter. As a result of the basic power imbalance between those who can own multiple homes and those who can’t even afford one the whole landlord tenet relationship is prone to exploitation. The power imbalance is furthered by landlord groups that lobby for less protection for humans seeking shelter and informal landlord groups that share tips on how to exploit renters. To give renters a leg up a new website call Rate the Landlord allows for tenets to rate and comment on landlords so that fellow renters can make educated decisions about who they will give money for their shelter to.

Rate the Landlord was created as a tool for tenants to stay informed about housing the same way we stay informed about every other business, through crowd-sourced reviews.

We know that tenants are often in the dark when it comes to renting with a new landlord. This conflicts with the standards we hold for every other business and service where reviews allow the consumer to make an informed decision based on reports of quality and conduct.

Something as important as housing shouldn’t be an exception. Reviewing landlords alongside other businesses will make for a more transparent marketplace. By sharing rental experiences, tenants can help others avoid situations of negligence or mistreatment and find landlords who will uphold best practices and adhere to their local legislation.

Share your experiences, read the reviews, and help us keep one another safe, informed, and empowered.

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New Method Destroys Forever Chemicals

- Adam Clare

lab

Forever chemicals get their name because there’s no natural way they decompose and we don’t know of efficient ways to break them down, that’s changing though. Researchers at UBC have found a way to destroy one family of forever chemical known as per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS. PFAS are found in raincoats, cookware, and even firefighting foam. These PFAS then enter waste systems and get into the wilds of nature so breaking them down is essential to the wellbeing of every species on our planet. Of course, the best way to deal with forever chemicals is not to use them in the fist place, but since they are being used we ought to ensure they don’t exist until the end of time.

While there are treatments currently on the market, like activated carbon and ion-exchange systems which are widely used in homes and industry, they do not effectively capture all the different PFAS, or they require longer treatment time, Dr. Mohseni explained.

“Our adsorbing media captures up to 99 per cent of PFAS particles and can also be regenerated and potentially reused. This means that when we scrub off the PFAS from these materials, we do not end up with more highly toxic solid waste that will be another major environmental challenge.”

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10 Ways Jobs can be More Sustainable

- Adam Clare

Today is the day to celebrate workers. If you’re currently employed and don’t own the company you’re at then, congratulations, you’re a worker! We can thank worker movements of the past for weekends, health care, and many other improvements to our quality of life. In the coming decades we may add good environmentally friendly worker policies to that list. There are at least ten ways that we can support workers while also supporting a green economy for years to come.

5. Advance funding for skills development towards sustainable jobs. There is significantly more money in this bucket—more than $800 million over three years, all of it previously announced—mainly to support young people pursuing in-demand green careers. It’s smart policy and the package even includes direct job creation through 70,000 annual summer placements. It falls well short of the Youth Climate Corps championed by the Climate Emergency Unit, which would include two-year apprenticeships and in-depth training.

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Kids Who Go To Art Galleries Are More Generous

- Adam Clare

Raising kids is a challenge, raising kids that are conscientious and caring is even harder. From new research it’s clear that taking kids to enjoy art will help them care more about the world around them and make them more generous. Art helps people of all ages experience awe and that’s the key to success. Awe can come from many things, but art is a good pathway and it’s easy to take kids to your local gallery.

To figure this out, the research team asked 159 volunteers aged 8 to 13 to watch short movie clips. Some of these clips were neutral, others cheerful, and others awe-inspiring. The researchers then asked the kids to determine how many items in a list of foods should be donated to a food drive for needy families. Alternately, the kids were given the option of donating their reward for participating in the study–a ticket to a local art museum–to a refugee family. 

“Children who watched the awe-inspiring video chose to count 50 percent more items for the food drive than children who watched the joy-inspiring clip and more than twice as many items as children who watched the neutral clip. Children in the awe-inspiring condition were also 2 to 3 times more likely to donate their museum tickets than children in the joyful or neutral conditions,” reports the Association for Psychological Science blog. 

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Off Grid Living for a Decade

- Adam Clare

The idea of living off the grid may sound impossible or like a pipe dream, but it is possible and cost efficient. A couple have been living off the grid for over a decade in their earth ship that looks and feels like a normal house. The neat stuff they installed includes a grey water collection and watering system, solar panels, and passive ventilation. Its’s a neat project that shows what’s possible,

Kristina is a structural engineer who designed and helped build this off-grid passive solar home with solar panels, solar hot water heaters, rainwater collection, a composting toilet, and a greywater garden. It’s a pretty impressive and functional Earthship inspired home and she lives here with her partner Matt in Colorado.

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