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Toronto is growing to be an environmental city with greener buildings, more emphasis on city cycling, and vegan restaurants popping up everywhere.

Alongside the new green trends sweeping across the urban landscape, apps that focus on sustainability and green initiatives are gaining in popularity as well. From biking apps to basic trading, there are many different ways to engage with your digital environmentalist side. Women’s Post has compiled a short list of interesting and revolutionary apps below:

BIKO

BIKO is a new cycling rewards app that recently launched in Toronto after having success in Bogota Columbia, Mexico City, Vancouver. For every kilometre cycled, the app will give one ‘biko’ point. Potential prizes you can receive with these ‘biko’ points include free coffees, beer, helmets, cycling parts, and discounts at partnering restaurants. The rewards are relatively easy to obtain, especially if you are a commuter cyclist, as exemplified by a free Jimmy’s coffee that costs 10 Biko points. The app also offers cycling maps across the city and you can record your cycling routes to share with other friends who use the app.

My City Bikes Toronto

This cycling app is useful for beginner cyclists and offers several links to cycling maps in Toronto, biking rules, and bike stores where equipment is offered. It also offers cycling paths specific for families, road and commuter paths, and safe paths for women to travel on at night.

Bunz

Bunz is a community sharing app where you can trade an item in exchange for another. The app is extensive and offers trades for items, a chat link to let people know about events in the city, job offers, and helping people with volunteer opportunities. It is a great way to connect into Toronto’s urban community and to find anything you need without an expensive price tag attached.

Live Green Toronto App

Live Green Toronto is an app that uses an interactive map to help people living in the city find green businesses easily, while updating to find the best ‘green deals’ available. Live Green also pledges to plant a tree every time 20 deals are claimed, which is a positive initiative towards living green in the city. It also provides green business owners with a way to reach more customers through the app.

Ontario Nature Forest Foraging Guide

The Ontario Nature Forest Foraging Guide is a fantastic fit for nature lovers who want to teach themselves and their families about the various types of plants and trees in Ontario. It provides information on how various plants and trees grow in each season, and whether they are edible or not. A few of the plants including burdoch, willow, yarrow, and birch. It offers pictures of the plant and where to spot it as well. Definitely a cool app for people who love looking for plants and trees in the forest.

There are many sustainable apps and these are a few options that are specifically being used in the Toronto area. Whether it be cycling, re-using items, or hiking in the forest, trying to engage in as many environmental activities when living in a large city is essential to keeping the world clean!

Which are your favourite green apps in Toronto? Let Women’s Post know in the comments below.

**Warning: May contain show spoilers.

Over the last few months, I’ve slowly been re-watching one of my favourite science-fiction television shows — Buffy the Vampire Slayer (BTVS). Little did I know that just as I opened the first episode of season five (thanks Netflix), I would be surprised by the following announcement.

It is the show’s 20^th anniversary.

The 1997 television drama merges high-school comedy and supernatural horror into one successful package. The storyline follows Buffy Summers, “one girl in all the world, a chosen one”, who has the strength to kill vampires and demons and save the world from multiple apocalypses — the plural of apocalypse has never been confirmed, even in the show. “I suddenly find myself needing to know the plural of apocalypse.”

Also, did I mention she is 16 and simply trying to get through high school in one piece without revealing her secret identity?

I realize this description may sound cheesy — and ultimately, the first few seasons of the show were just that. But, it was also good television. Joss Whedon, the show’s creator, knew how to merge all these great themes together in a way that made you laugh, cry, and yell at the TV with each plot betrayal. Many of the monsters Buffy fights are metaphors themselves for real-life high school issues. Inappropriate teacher-student relations, peer pressure, online dating, physical abuse, and, of course, teenage romance. All the while kicking serious vampire ass in high heels and a halter-top. Now, that’s female empowerment!

As Buffy grows older, the show introduced a lot adult themes like casual sex, employment, and the effects of alcohol. The characters viewers spent years getting to know started to change and grow. They went off to university, dealt with career transitions, and experienced intense loss. Buffy’s best friend Willow starts to build a relationship with fellow witch Tara in what was my first introduction into lesbianism as a teen. This exploration of sexuality was done in such a subtle and honest way that it just seemed a natural transition for the character, and for the viewers.

What does this all have to do with feminism, you may ask? The whole idea of BTVS was that a young girl, someone who is often overestimated in intelligence and strength, has the ability to conquer the worst evils the world has ever seen. She has boyfriends, sure, but usually she is the one doing the rescuing. As she tells her sister Dawn, “no guy is worth your life, not ever.”

In the end, Buffy becomes the idealistic female superhero. Sure, she has a few male sidekicks and a British father figure to offer guidance, but at the end of the day, it’s Buffy’s plan, her leadership, and her sacrifice that saves the world.

And then, there is the last season (note: serious spoilers ahead).

As Willow and Buffy work together to break the “one chosen one in all the world” curse, her strength and power is transported into all the potential slayers around the world. From the young teenagers fighting the ultimate evil to the six-year-old playing baseball in the park, that energy flows within them, making them stronger and more capable then ever before. Now, it’s up to all of womankind to fight the battle. Could there be a more perfect symbol for female strength and unity?

At the end of the series, she doesn’t get the guy. In fact, she is independent, standing among the rubble of the apocalypse she helped prevent, with her friends and family by her side. She is strong, stoic, and just plain awesome.

If I wrote an article about all the things I learned, and continue to learn, from this amazing 90s television show, it would result in an essay over 10,000 words in length. Every few years, I re-watch BTVS and find something I previously missed. I usually watch it when I need to rejuvenate my sense of purpose or when I’m feeling down after the end of a relationship. Buffy the Vampire Slayer isn’t just a quirky teenage drama with lovable characters and a few evil vampires to fill in the space. It is a coming of age tale that represented all of the good and bad elements involved in growing up. Underneath the supernatural magic of this television show, BTVS is able to accurately portray the effects of death and trauma on a group of young kids, while still instilling hope in those who were watching it.

Not many television shows nowadays can make that same claim.

All of this is to say, happy 20^th anniversary BTVS! I have no doubt that, in another 20 years, people will still be talking about this iconic and empowering series.

Are you a fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer? Let us know what the show means to you below!

willow

Going green in Toronto with these community apps

What Buffy the Vampire Slayer taught me as a feminist