People Fixing The World Folgen

Providing food for seven billion people is fraught with difficulty. Fertilising vast tracts of land and flying fresh vegetables across the globe comes at a huge environmental cost. But more and more people are turning to hydroponics - growing plants in water, without any soil. The idea itself is hundreds of years old, but new twists on the old technique are now shaping the future of food. We investigate some of the most innovative hydroponics projects, from the refugees growing barley for their goats in the Algerian desert to the underground farm built in an abandoned London bomb shelter. But how efficient can the process become? Can hydroponics begin to offer a serious alternative to conventional farming?Presenter: Harriet Noble Photo credit: Shutterstock

By its very nature, volunteering means you don’t get paid. But what if there was a way to compensate volunteers that also helped the local economy? The northern English city of Hull is trying an experiment with a new, local cryptocurrency called HullCoin - the first of its kind in the world. It’s a sort of community loyalty scheme, that can only be earned by doing ‘good deeds’ and can only be redeemed in local businesses. But can it really improve the economic resilience of struggling industrial cities? World Hacks has been to Hull to find out.Presenter: Dougal Shaw Reporter: Elizabeth Davies Photo Credit: BBC

Naomi is not your average teacher. For one thing, she is only six months old. But in many schools across Canada babies like Naomi are a regular feature at the front of class. It is because of an education programme called Roots of Empathy, which is designed to encourage kids to be kinder. The idea is that because a baby cannot explain and externalise how it is feeling, children learn to recognise and identify the baby’s emotions, and become more emotionally astute themselves. It has been proven to reduce bullying. World Hacks visits a school in Toronto to see how it works.Reporter: Harriet Noble Producer: Elizabeth Davies(Photo: Naomi)