TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 23 , 2021. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ SU A
time in his boiler room. Then, two orders came in
from a school and church.
Sensing the sustainability benefits and interest
from children, he couldn’t refuse.
More than 200 orders later — with 80 machines
still on the waiting list — Everding’s Better World
Machines has helped plant about 2.5 acres of wild-
flowers. Everding calls it a first step in habitat
restoration.
Each machine takes up to five hours of restoration
and refitting. He begins by paying painters to sand
and repaint the machines yellow. He then hammers
out d ents, makes r epairs and p uts on water-resistant
bee stickers. For many of the older machines, which
were in use before the euro came into circulation in
200 2, he also reconfigures the coin slot to fit euro
coins.
“The great thing about it is really the variety of
people and locations wanting to do their part in
addressing climate change,” Everding said.
This year, a public library in Berlin put up the
100 th Bienenautomat in Germany.
Tim Schumann, the head of that library, said
families with young children often come to the
building to get seeds — and learn about bees along
the w ay. The project, he s aid, raised awareness about
what locals can do to address climate change.
“Small seeds can be an act of empowerment,”
Schumann said. “You c an m ake your small neighbor-
hood aware and part of restoration.”
Schumann, like many other of E verding’s custom-
ers, heard about the project through social media
and was excited to join, raising 650 euros (about
$732) to buy a machine.
The librarian sees this as one step in a larger
movement. He echoed Everding, who hopes the
German government and the European Union will
ban all pesticides and move away from “industrial
agriculture to more ecological agriculture.”
“It’s clear that the climate crisis and the biodiver-
sity crisis is here, and it’s c lear we need to take action
to address them in tandem,” said Laura Hildt, a
policy officer for biodiversity and E.U. affairs at the
European Environmental Bureau. “Ecosystem res-
toration is an easy way to do this.”
Next summer, Everding plans to visit each
Bienen automat to meet some of the people he has
inspired to take action. He hopes his project to save
wild bees is just the beginning.
“It’s a building block,” Everding said. “But when
there’s a block and there’s a block, the whole can
eventually change.”
[email protected]wild bees,” said Everding, who later founded a
sustainable property management company.
He was settling into life with his girlfriend when
he read about Tissot’s p roject. After Everding p ut up
the first Bienenautomat, regional papers wrote sto-
ries about the initiative. Soon, he received emails
from strangers trying to order one.
“Everybody says it’s so easy to help,” said Tissot,- “For people my age, chewing-gum machines are
perfect to get us to take action because they remind
us of our childhood,” as does the connection to a
famous G erman cartoon character, Maya the Bee.
Everding declined the first orders. He never in-
tended to create a nationwide project. Old gumball
machines c an cost up to 200 euros (about $ 225) e ach
online. Everding had his own company to run and
could r epair the decades-old relics only in his spare
“Let’s make something really crazy to make the
world a better place,” Everding told Tissot at the
time.
In 2007, Everding had started volunteering at an
animal shelter while on an information technology
apprenticeship to learn to repair televisions, radios
and other devices. The shelter piqued his interest in
sustainability and inspired his love for wildlife.
Then, in 2014, he bought a house near a forest in
Dortmund. He planted wildflowers to try to attract
the bees that had fascinated him in wildlife docu-
mentaries. Soon he saw some of the rarest bee
species in Germany — including the European or-
chard bee — pollinating his flowers. In total, he
planted 100 wildflower species. He n ever considered
using pesticides.
“I see myself first and foremost as a lobbyist forBY DAN ROSENZWEIG-ZIFFberlin — It started with a joke.
In spring 2019, eco-gardener and entrepreneur
Sebastian Everding marveled over how a German
comedian, Oliver Tissot, had repurposed an old
gumball machine into a n “automatic joke machine.”
Put in 20 cents, turn a dial and get a classic German
joke. Everding thought it was “ingenious” and con-
tacted Tissot. He wanted in.
Everding, then 36, quickly retooled a gumball
machine into a joke dispenser and put it outside his
home in Dortmund in the Ruhr River valley. He
loved hearing the laughter, but wanted to do more.
An avid gardener, he thought of his beloved bees —
the pollen-spreading environmental linchpins
whose numbers are dwindling under pressure from
climate change, pesticides and other threats.
Everding’s next reimagined gumball machine de-
livered a capsule o f wildflower seeds, which passers-
by could use t o create bee habitats in their neighbor-
hoods. His experiment has grown to more than
160 dispensers in Germany, Austria and Belgium at
sites such as libraries, train station kiosks, energy
service centers and veterinarian offices.
“The vending machine alone cannot stop the
problems with the wild bees,” Everding said. “ But we
hope the project changes awareness of the popula-
tion.”
The decline in bees and other pollinators —
butterflies, beetles and more — is another sign of a
planet under stress, including ecosystems lost or
changed by a warming climate. According to the
International Union for Conservation of Nature, at
least 1 in 10 bee species in Europe — some existing
nowhere else in the world — are threatened with
extinction.
A researcher, posting on the U.S. Agriculture
Department’s w ebsite, described populations of key-
stone pollinators, such as the western honey bee, as
being “at a critical crossroads” that could threaten
over 100 U.S.-grown crops that rely on bees and other
natural pollen spreaders. Up to 70 percent of the
main crops grown for human consumption depend
on insect pollination, according to the International
Union for Conservation of Nature.
In Germany, Everding built partnerships with
Bienenretter Manufaktur, which promotes sustain-
able beekeeping and other eco-friendly initiatives,
and the FINE Frankfurt Institute of Sustainable
Development, which c reated an educational c ompo-
nent around the seed dispenser, dubbed the
“Bienen automat.”
The WorldSOUTH KOREA
Former strongman
Chun Doo-hwan dies
Former South Korean
president Chun Doo-hwan, whose
iron-fisted rule of the country
following a 1979 military coup
sparked massive democracy
protests, died on Tuesday at the
age of 90, the Yonhap news
agency said.
Chun had multiple myeloma, a
blood cancer that was in
remission, and died at his Seoul
home, Yonhap said.
A former military commander,
Chun presided over the 1980
Gwangju army massacre of pro-
democracy demonstrators, a
crime for which he was later
convicted and received a
commuted death sentence.
An aloof, ramrod-straight
Chun during his mid-1990s trial
defended the coup as necessary to
save the nation from a political
crisis and denied sending troops
into Gwangju.
Chun joined the military
straight out of high school,
working his way up the ranks
until he was appointed a
commander in 1979. Taking
charge of the investigation into
the assassination of President
Park Chung-hee that year, Chun
courted key military allies and
gained control of South Korea’s
intelligence agencies to lead a
Dec. 12 coup.
Chun’s eight-year rule in the
presidential Blue House was
marked by brutality and political
repression. It was, however, also
marked by economic prosperity.
Chun resigned from office
amid a nationwide student-led
democratic movement in 1987
demanding a direct electoral
system.
In 1995, he was charged with
mutiny and treason and was
arrested after he refused to
appear at the prosecutors’ office
and fled to his hometown.
In what local media dubbedthe “ trial of the century,” he and
coup co-conspirator and
presidential successor Roh Ta e-
woo were found guilty of mutiny,
treason and bribery. In their
verdict, judges said Chun’s rise to
power came “through illegal
means which inflicted enormous
damage on the people.”
Thousands of students were
believed to have been killed at
Gwangju, according to t he
testimony of survivors, former
military officers and
investigators.
Roh was given a lengthy jail
term, while Chun was sentenced
to death. However, that was
commuted by the Seoul High
Court in recognition of Chun’s
role in fast-paced economic
development and the peaceful
transfer of the presidency to Roh
in 1988. Both men were pardoned
and freed from jail in 1997 by
President Kim Young-sam in
what he called an effort to
promote “national unity.”
— ReutersSUDANLeader: Government
will be independentS udan’s reinstated prime
minister said in an interview that
aired Monday that he will be able
to form an independent
government, according to an
agreement he signed a day earlier
with the country’s top generals
who overthrew him in a coup last
month.
In comments made to the
Al Jazeera English satellite
channel, Prime Minister Abdalla
Hamdok said he foresaw the next
government as focusing on
rewriting the country’s
constitution and holding
elections on time.
On Sunday, Hamdok signed a
deal under which he would be
reinstated, almost a month after a
military coup put him under
house arrest. The agreement
envisions an independent,
technocratic cabinet to be led byHamdok until elections can be
held. Even then, it would remain
under military oversight. But
Hamdok claimed that he will
have the power to make
government appointments.
In response to the deal,
thousands of Sudanese took to
the streets Sunday to denounce
what many called a betrayal of the
democratic cause by Hamdok,
who has been the civilian face of
the transitional government since
it took power after a 2019 popular
uprising deposed longtime
autocrat Omar Hassan al-Bashir.
— Associated PressDutch premier lashes out at
‘idiot rioters’: Dutch Prime
Minister Mark Rutte lashed out
Monday at “idiot” rioters who
rampaged through cities across
the Netherlands over the
weekend when protests against
coronavirus restrictions turned
violent. More than 100 people
were arrested in three nights of
violence, during which policeopened fire at rioters in
Rotterdam on Friday. “ There is a
lot of unrest in society because we
have been dealing with the
misery of corona for so long,”
Rutte said. “But I will never
accept idiots using pure violence
just because they are unhappy.”
About 30 people were arrested
Sunday after dozens of arrests the
previous two days, as mobs set
fires and threw rocks.Blaze at nursing home in
Bulgaria kills 9: Nine people
have died after a fire swept
through a nursing home Monday
in eastern Bulgaria, officials said.
The building in the village of
Royak caught fire at 6 p.m. Nine
people died “out of the 58 who
were in the home at the time,” fire
inspector Tihomir Totev said.
Most of the residents had to be
evacuated and some received
treatment for smoke inhalation,
he added. The cause is under
investigation, officials said.
— From news servicesDIGESTGerman gardener creates a b uzz with gumball machinesTo save wild bees, he retooled a childhood classic to dispense wildflower seeds for planting. Now, his idea has spread across three countries.COURTESY OF KYLLTAL BEEKEEPERS’ ASSOCIATIONS. EVERDING
FROM TOP: A Bienenautomat — also called a Bienenfutter-Automat, or bee food vending
machine — i n Densborn, Germany. Said creator Sebastian Everding: “The vending machine
alone cannot stop the problems with the wild bees. But we hope the project changes awareness.”