Gumball Machines To Revitalize Bees

A gardener- sounds pretty mundane as a word- doesn't it?

Well, the action he has taken might also be mundane yet it is pretty effective.

Sebastian Everding – a lobbyist for wild bees as in his own words.

The idea of using Gumballs was actually came from a German comedian Oliver Tissot who renovated an old gumball machine to a joke machine which gives you a classical German joke for 20 cents. After seeing this, Everding thought this idea is genius and immediately he contacted Tissot to say he wants to be part of this. 

He also turned old gumball machine to a joke dispenser and enjoyed the laughter outside in front of his house in Ruhr River Valley, however he is a gardener- which formed the idea of helping bees.

Bees are already under a lot of pressure due to pesticides, climate change and other various threats. Bees and other pollen-spreading environmental key species are truly the core of ecosystems.

As a result of his occupation and the dangerous situtaiton bees are in , Everding’s re-designed gumball machine is able to deliver a capsule of wildflower seeds , which everyone who passes by can use to create bee habitats in their own neighborhoods.

Figure 1: The 130th bee vending machine in Dresden, Germany.

The action only itself cannot change the on-going crisis, however it can raise awareness and create a positive butterfly effect to help pollinator species such as bees in this case. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, nearly 70 percent of main crops produced for human consumption depends on the insect pollination.

In fact, in 2014, after Everding himself created a restoration for bees with these wildflower seeds, he observed some of the rarest bee species. These included European orchard bee which was pollinating his flowers.

This project quickly have been spread around and now more than 160 dispensers in Germany, Austria and Belgium exists for this purpose. In Germany, collaboration between Everding and Bienenretter Manufaktur have made available the promotion and further support of these re-imagined gumball machines.

Finally, with more than 200 orders and 80 machines which waiting to be delivered, Everding’s Better World Machines actually resulted in planting of 2.5 acres of wildflowers- a habitat restoration step. Everding said this project is so easy to be part of it and follow the procedure that variety of people and locations can participate to address the climate change.

Figure 2 : Employees of the municipality Limeshain, Germany, after the assembly of the 67th bee vending machine

There are students who frequently visit library to take seeds from the machine there and while they are on their way to the machine- also as they are going back - they learn about bees as well. Raising awareness and spreading the wildflowers are working together beautifully. With these small seeds even the smallest neighborhoods are able to be part of this huge act against climate change.

As Everding also explained, these kind of actions are able to create blocks of good acts which will pile up and form a greater effect. 

Figure 3 : Inventor and founder Sebastian Everding with a bee vending machine in his garden outside

References

BIBLIOGRAPHY

[1]	D. Rosenzweig-Ziff, "Washington Post," Washington Post, 16 November 2021. [Online]. Available: https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2021/11/16/climate-change-bees-germany-restoration/. [Accessed 21 November 2021].