Today at Squirrel News, we’re talking about a successful referendum to pedestrianise 500 more streets in Paris, an ethical marketplace highlighting Black-owned businesses, and the microcurrencies keeping money in local communities.
Parisians vote in favour of pedestrianising 500 more streets
In the latest move to improve air quality and curb car usage, some 65.96% of Paris residents voted in favour of turning even more streets into walker-friendly zones. The referendum follows similar votes, including a 2023 ban on e-scooters, and last year’s decision to triple parking charges for large SUVs.
Black-owned businesses get a shout out in ethical alternative to Amazon
With an uptick in the number of DEI rollbacks at major retailers such as Target and Amazon, consumers across the US are looking for better alternatives. Enter Dacia Petrie: her app and website, Black Nile, is a marketplace spotlighting over 3,000 Black-owned brands across over 40 product categories.
Empty retail spaces is a common sight on UK high streets, with many staying unused for years at a time. Now, eight local authorities have been given the power to auction the lease of empty stores if a space remains empty for a year and landlords do not take steps to let it.
Region-specific microcurrencies are proven to keep local economies strong and redirect cash towards small community businesses. Despite already being around for hundreds of years, they’re gradually growing in popularity in the 21st century.
The new course for 14-16 year olds will teach students about the climate crisis, sustainability, and the natural environment. It will be designed to be delivered “as effectively” in city centres as it can be in the countryside.
Bubbles could remove forever chemicals from our water
Toxic chemicals have been finding their way into our water supplies for a long time, but a research team at Oxford Brookes University is working on an usual solution to remove the long-lasting pests: bubbles.
This non-profit is working to preserve digital history and its data against loss
The Internet Archive has been doing the important work of saving the world’s internet history since 1996. With so much data being erased by the current US administration, they are working with scientists, universities and organisations in their preservation efforts.
The Colombian architects overturning colonialist ‘sustainability’ ideas
A 30-acre construction lab is helping reshape Colombia’s architecture with ancestral knowledge and direct ecological action. “As architects, we need to unlearn everything we have been taught,” says Ana María Gutiérrez.
World’s largest women’s prison launches inmate-run newspaper
The Paper Trail is managed exclusively by incarcerated writers and editors at Central California’s Women’s facility. It was started by Jesse Vasquez, who founded a nonprofit organisation that creates media centres inside prisons after he completed his own sentence.
Ukraine’s clandestine book club defies Russia’s push to rewrite history
It must be one of the most dangerous book clubs in the world. Risking discovery and even prison, teenage readers meet in secret to discuss texts that Putin’s troops are trying to erase.
