Photo: Dan Burton/Unsplash (CC0)
Today at Squirrel News, we’re talking about how the five biggest UK banks have launched a pilot scheme to make banking accessible for homeless people, how a small city in France managed to cut organic waste by 40%, and a unique solution to restoring Senegal’s degraded grasslands.
Homeless people will for the first time be able to open accounts with the UK’s five biggest banks, in a pilot scheme marking the launch of the government’s financial inclusion strategy. The programme will also help domestic abuse victims recover their credit score.
Source: The Guardian
Greater Besançon, a city in eastern France not far from the border with Switzerland, has created several pop-up drop-off points, available for residents to hand over food waste. Once deposited, the organic waste is gathered by a collector on an electric bike and delivered to a farm nine miles away, where it is turned into compost and eventually used to grow more food.
Source: Reasons To Be Cheerful
Almere is the Netherlands’ newest city, and its 5,000 inhabitants can build their homes however they like, with one catch: half of their land must be devoted to growing food.
Source: Good Good Good
Starting in January, all forms of physical punishment of children will be strictly prohibited under Czech law. Over the past few decades, many studies within the country have examined the effects of corporal punishment, and not one has found that it has a positive impact on children or their behaviour.
Source: Prague Morning
Every Cure is a nonprofit organisation that uses artificial intelligence to find new uses for generic and off-label drugs, hoping to discover ready-for-use safe and effective treatments, especially for people suffering from untreatable diseases.
Source: Good Good Good
Each year, roughly $11 billion in salvageable prescriptions are thrown away or destroyed. One organisation is trying to change that: Sirum, a nonprofit social enterprise that takes unopened, unexpired prescription medication and redistributes it to low-income communities across the US.
Source: Good Good Good
The main goal of AGILE is to make sure education is safe, inclusive and equitable. Since its launch, the project has rehabilitated over 13,000 classrooms, whilst also building almost 9,000 water, sanitation and hygiene facilities to create better learning conditions across the country.
Source: Nigeria Startup Act
ICARUS equips creatures from bats and birds to goats and giraffes with lightweight smart tags that beam data to satellites and CubeSats, smaller satellites the size of a shoe box, showing real-time insights into animals’ rhythms.
Source: Reasons To Be Cheerful
A third of Senegal’s pastures are degraded – sparse, patchy grass, bare soil, few trees – due to overgrazing and erratic rainfall caused by climate change. A regenerative scheme has shown early promise, with herders hopeful it can restore this land.
Source: The Guardian
The Marsh Appreciation and Restoration Society for Happiness Project started with a community litter collection, but quickly evolved into something much bigger. Now, the group has pulled tyres, radios, televisions, and even a car engine from their local marsh – with a positive impact on local wildlife.
Source: AP News
