In today’s edition:

🪑 Activists get a seat

🔋 Quick battery-swaps

🦈 Roboshark gobbling waste

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💼 Big Business (1-minute read)

One-minute battery swaps spurring EV adoption in Asia

Manufacturers of two and three-wheeler vehicles in Asia, such as Taiwanese-based Gogoro, are embracing electric mobility through batteries that can get changed on the fly (rather than relying on re-charging). For a monthly subscription, users of Gogoro mopeds can swap out their batteries as often as they like with vending machine-like device collecting depleted batteries and distributing fresh ones within 60 seconds.

Importance: While battery-swapping has failed to catch on in the West, it's well suited to regions where two and three-wheeler vehicles dominate. 20% of two-wheelers in Southeast Asia are expected to be electric by 2030 (up from 2% in 2020), partly due to battery swapping

Puma gives young environmentalists a seat at the table

The sportswear brand plans to invite four environmental activists in their 20s (through the Voices of a RE:GENERATION) initiative to input on how the company approaches environmental and social topics. The initiative comes after research by Puma into Gen Z customers revealed 71% feel their voices are not being heard.

Improving: Puma also recently received a fashion sustainability ranking of “it’s a start” — the middle option of five — by the platform Good on You. So the RE:GENERATION initiative is expected to focus on areas where Puma faced criticism, such as info on worker rights and tackling waste in the supply chain.

Elephants fighting climate change

According to new research, Elephants’ preference for tasty leaves and large sweet fruits is helping mitigate global warming. Asian and African elephants like to eat from small, leafy trees, leaving larger trees more space to grow. The latter absorb and store more planet-warming carbon dioxide, and therefore, forests with elephants hold more carbon than forests without them

💰 Deals of the Week (1-minute read)

🛵 Magenta Mobility raised $11Mn in Series A for its end-to-end EV solutions, including EV charging hardware, software, installation, and operations in India

🍎 Mycro harvest raised $120k in pre-seed for its AI-powered smart farms to unlock the global production of mushrooms for local food, plant-based meat alternatives, and bioplastics

🚗 Shuttlers raised $4M in Series A to fuel its shared mobility solution across Nigeria

☀️ Prozeal Infra raised $4M in Series A for its solar EPC and clean, renewable energy designed to promote sustainable energy consumption

💭 Little Bytes

Quote: “A truly green strategy for the UK’s financial sector would not only incentivise sustainable investment but take responsible action to shift finance away from big polluters.” Positive Money’s executive director Fran Boait

Stat: Only 1% of land in America’s 35 largest cities is walkable, yet they generate 20% of GDP - WEF

Watch: Robot Shark gobbling up rubbish from the water

🗞 In other news…

• More than 500 major league baseball home runs since 2010 can be attributed to global warming, according to a new study.

• Six months after US President Joe Biden’s climate bill became law, companies announced over 100,000 new clean energy jobs in the US.

• The UK’s National Grid has successfully energised 36 of the world’s first T-pylons, the first major UK redesign of pylons since 1927

• A coalition of climate groups is stepping up pressure on Japan's top three banks to cut financing linked to fossil fuels, filing shareholder resolutions to be voted on at the companies' annual general meetings in June.

🎣 Gone Phishing

Three of these stories are true, one we've made up — guess which:

• Sustainable, coconut oil-based coffee launched by Dunkin' Donuts 

• Chinese man jailed for scaring over 1,000 chickens to death

• Fire crew rescues man stuck inside art display

• Pilot forced into emergency landing after finding a snake on the plane

Written by Colin and Ollie - Drop us a message!