Welcome back to our weekly behind-the-scenes glimpse at what’s getting our team talking. Let us know what you think at [email protected].
Busy beavers
Back in May, RTBC Contributing Editor Peter Yeung reported on the reintroduction of beavers in London as part of an effort to rewild the city. And now, for the first time in 400 years, at least two baby beavers have been born in London.
“I am delighted that baby beavers have been born in West London,” said Mayor Sadiq Khan. “Beavers are nature’s environmental engineers and it’s very encouraging to see what a positive change they’ve already had for local communities and nature as we build a fairer, greener city for all Londoners.”
Comic relief
This week, Executive Editor Will Doig enjoyed reading a comic published by Modern Farmer about how farmers in a small Oregon town have successfully kept a large-scale chicken farm (a concentrated animal feeding operation or CAFO) out of their community.
Will says:
This comic about a town that stopped a factory farm is a great read — it’s written in the voices of the people who were directly involved and affected.
Waste not
In South Korea, hardly any leftover food goes to waste: most of it is turned into fertilizer, fed to livestock or converted into biogas, a form of renewable energy. How did the country achieve this? According to a Washington Post story shared by Contributing Editor Michaela Haas, by banning food scraps from landfills and requiring residents to separate food waste from their trash and recycling. By contrast, in the US, the EPA has estimated that a whopping 60 percent of food waste goes to landfills.
Michaela says:
That South Korea is turning 98 percent of its food scraps into compost and energy is really impressive.
What else we’re reading
👠 Our Carrie Bradshaw index: where Americans can afford to live solo in 2024 — shared by RTBC founder David Byrne from The Economist
🧑🔬 Indiana Looks to Swiss Experts to Create Thousands of Student Apprenticeships — shared by Editorial Intern Valeria Morales-Soto from The 74
📷 Inside the arts institution turning schoolchildren from the Bronx into photojournalists — shared by David Byrne from the Financial Times
