Rather, it is what’s on the other side of the transaction — typically goods or services — that is top of mind.

And it’s across the infrastructure enabling that transaction and helping the end-user secure their good or service where payments innovation can have the biggest impact, particularly as it relates to payment experience and personalization.

“There are really two categories where we’re seeing big leaps forward. One is around operational improvement, improving payments in the background along the connective tissue of the ecosystem, and the other is consumer-centric around rewards and loyalty personalization,” Brian Gloede, head of strategic partnerships at Banyan, told PYMNTS as part of a discussion for the “What’s Next in Payments” series.

Item-level data infrastructure opens up new avenues for enhancing the payments experience across both these categories.

By connecting payment data with item-level information, consumers can quickly resolve discrepancies, making the entire process more efficient as it relates to chargebacks and friendly fraud, as well as reconciliations.

“If you consider marketplaces, or other places where payments are becoming more and more embedded into an operational flow, they’re automated in a lot of ways. Being able to also reconcile what they’re for is really important,” Gloede said.

Connecting payment data with item-level information also allows for a much more effective and efficient targeting of consumers with better, more relevant rewards and offers by linking incentives to past and projected behavior.

“Rewards and personalization are a huge area,” Gloede said.

Innovating Both Sides of the Transaction

The payments landscape is undergoing a profound transformation, driven by ongoing digitization and shifting behavioral expectations. This modernization is increasingly taking place on both sides of the transaction.

But the sharing of data, both as it relates to the payment itself and to the identity of the payer and payee, needs to be sensitively and securely handled.

“If we’re all looking for the panacea of perfectly customized and personalized experiences when it comes to not just payments, but even FinTech writ large, a lot of information needs to change hands,” Gloede said.

That’s why it is more important than ever to build and architect technology with a trust-first point of view, he noted.

“All of the parties need to understand how their data is being utilized and where it is being transmitted, and have appropriate controls,” he said.

Touching on Banyan’s own approach, Gloede said his firm practices data minimization and leverages privacy-preserving technology that only uses de-identified data relevant for the      purpose, ensuring consumer privacy around personally identifiable information (PII) is maintained.

“That was an important and intentional choice that we made as a new entrant, that we needed to build trust first into our architecture,” he said.

Personalization Powers Payments Innovation

By connecting payments with the items consumers buy, enhancing operational efficiency and prioritizing privacy, the world of payments is set to become more seamless, rewarding, and user centric.

“We believe that personalization is still the future of payments and FinTech writ large, and for a lot of other commercial type transactions across commerce in general. We believe that personalization should exist in the places that have a customer relationship of any kind,” Gloede said.

He explained that infrastructure players are the connective tissue along the payments ecosystem that sits in a unique place to innovate when it comes to personalization, because infrastructure players enjoy direct relationships with merchants and bank card issuers.

“Those are going to be, and continue to be, great places for personalization because they have the trust of the customer and they have increasingly the information and insight into what’s relevant,” he said. “And personalization without relevance is not a very helpful outcome for anybody involved.”

The ability to offer truly customized payment experiences is becoming more feasible with the accessibility of item-level data.

As for what the future holds, Gloede envisions a landscape where personalization becomes an integral part of the payments ecosystem. By drawing from the advertising world’s dynamic targeting models and analytical tools, payments providers can create tailored payment experiences for consumers, he said.

“Things are going to always head in the same direction and that is becoming more seamless, particularly around the immediate applicability of item-level data to personalize payment experiences in wholly owned ecosystems,” he said, “where customer loyalty is moving into the card channel.”

BY PYMNTS  |  OCTOBER 26, 2023

In another instance, two teenage boys and a 20-year-old man have been arrested in Toronto after making threats at a Jewish high school – an incident which police are also investigating as a possible hate crime. 

These are but two examples, among many others, of the extent to which tensions in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories are spilling over around the world, including Canada.   

There has been a clear rise in antisemitic, Islamophobic and anti-Palestinian hate and violence, as well as increased fear and vulnerability within those communities. Governments and people everywhere must act immediately and urgently to resist this madness. 

The escalating conflict between Israel and Hamas is exacting a staggering civilian toll. Yet, while Canada, the United States and the European Union have extended “unwavering support” to Israel, they have been far from definitive in their support for the people of Gaza. 

Alongside the strong positions that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has taken in condemning the Hamas attacks and calling for the release of hostages, he and his government must also forcefully back calls for an immediate ceasefire and for unhindered access to Gaza for humanitarian aid. 

Canada must also condemn and demand an end to the Israeli military operations that are blatantly and devastatingly not in keeping with either international humanitarian law or international human rights law. 

Both steps would be a major – but greatly overdue and welcome – change in Canada’s long-standing approach to the region.  

As has been made abundantly clear by human rights groups and the UN Human Rights Council’s independent commission of inquiry, Hamas is responsible for war crimes in southern Israel, including indiscriminate rocket attacks, hostage-taking and summary executions. 

This most recent Hamas attack has been calculatingly cruel and unimaginably violent. Those responsible for these horrific crimes must be brought to justice – but justice that is in accordance with international law, possibly through the currently blocked wider investigation of actions in the region by all sides by the International Criminal Court. 

Israel’s massive siege and bombardment of Gaza is not that kind of justice. Quite the contrary, extensive, terrifying war crimes are being exacted on the entire population of Gaza, not just Hamas leaders or fighters. Illegality in response to illegality does not resemble justice in the slightest. 

Close to 6,000 lives have been lost already in the armed conflict between Israel and Hamas, according to their accounts. That staggering number continues to rise daily, particularly as the unrelenting Israeli bombardment of Gaza – where more than 70 per cent of those killed have been women and children – intensifies. 

Israel’s military is now poised for a massive ground invasion of Gaza and has been warning civilians in the northern part of the territory to evacuate to the south. The UN has made it clear that an evacuation of that scale before the invasion is impossible. 

A ground offensive will almost inevitably force hundreds and thousands of Palestinians out of the Gaza Strip, possibly even across the fortified southern border with Egypt.  

Israel’s plans have been rightly condemned as unlawful collective punishment of civilians in Gaza, more than half of whom are children. It will in no way bring either justice or security to Israelis. 

All parties to the conflict and all members of the international community, including Canada, need to focus now on de-escalation, peace and protecting human rights. It is in that direction, not more bombs and military assaults, that the only hope for averting further devastation lies. 

That is crucial as well, to avoid the worrying potential that other actors such as Iran and the Lebanese militia group Hezbollah will be drawn into a widening conflict. 

Since 2007, Israel has imposed an air, land and sea blockade on the Gaza Strip, reinforced by Egypt’s closure of its border crossing out of Gaza at Rafah, which has caused immense suffering in the territory.  

Many experts, including the UN special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, have raised the concern that this may amount to ethnic cleansing.  

They also worry it might lay the ground for Israeli expansion of unlawful settlements, already commonplace in the West Bank, into Gaza as well – in further violation of international law. 

The Israeli-announced “complete siege” of Gaza – with no access to food, water, electricity and fuel – amounts to a collective punishment of the civilian population, unequivocally prohibited under international law. It has to stop.  

The minimal humanitarian access that opened up across Gaza’s southern border with Egypt on October 21 is nowhere near enough. 

Canada must call equally for the safety of civilians in the Gaza Strip and Israel. It is no longer defensible for Canada to maintain a position of forcefully recognizing Israel’s right to defend itself – with the important qualification that Israel’s defence should be in accordance with international law – while still stopping short of what is required next. 

In addition to calling for an end to military operations, another concrete indication of a new approach would be for Canada to abandon its opposition to the investigation that is currently being conducted by the International Criminal Court’s prosecutor into extensive evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the occupied Palestinian territory. 

The ICC investigation targets both Israelis and Palestinians. It represents a vital step forward in confronting the impenetrable impunity that has prevailed throughout the decades of this conflict. 

It provides a venue for prosecuting both the crimes that were committed by Hamas, originating in Gaza, and the crimes Israel is responsible for in its response.  That is something that Canada should strongly endorse, not seek to shut down. 

Canada, widely seen on the world stage as a champion of international justice, is particularly well-placed to work against that impunity. Opposing the prosecutor’s important and ground-breaking investigation serves only to reinforce that impunity – a significant barrier to achieving both justice and peace. 

All of this matters here in Canada as well. Jewish Canadians, as well as Palestinian and Arab Canadians, have been deeply affected and traumatized by the recent events. They both fear, and are vulnerable to, hate crimes here.  

They need to be confident that their government is standing up equally for everyone’s human rights in this terrible conflict. Palestinian Canadians, Arab Canadians and Muslim Canadians very understandably do not have that confidence today.  

It all comes down to the simple truth that the way toward peace in Israel and Palestine lies in fully respecting international human rights and humanitarian law. That means the rights of Israeli and Palestinians alike – an approach which must now define the way Canada deals with this crisis. 

Thirst and Hunger Grow in Besieged Gaza Amid

Israeli Bombardment

Residents wait in line for hours for bread and water, with fights sometimes breaking out. The United Nations has called the situation a humanitarian catastrophe.

Waiting with jugs to fill up at one of the few water stations still functioning in the southern town of Khan Younis on Tuesday.Credit...Samar Abu Elouf for The New York Times

Mohammed Aborjela, 27, used to document daily life in the Gaza Strip on his Instagram account before the war, videos about a crab dish prepared along the seaside or pigeon racing in the coastal enclave.

Now, he has turned to documenting daily life under Israeli bombardment. On Sunday, he posted a story about the daily struggle to find drinking water.

He records snippets as he walks, carrying a bright yellow jug to one of the few water stations still functioning in the southern city of Khan Younis. At the station, people — many of them children who struggle to carry the full jugs home — jostle for position in a chaotic line to fill up on well water.

“There’s no more water in the taps, so we have to go get water in this way,” Mr. Aborjela, a project coordinator with the development organization Youth Without Borders, told The New York Times. “The conditions for filling up water are not healthy. People are on top of one another and people are getting sick.”

Gaza, blockaded by Israel and Egypt for 16 years, has long had a precarious water supply. Residents relied on groundwater filtered at water stations, desalination plants, a pipeline from Israel and bottled imports.

Now, the taps have run dry, trucks are no longer refilling household water tanks, and the desalination plants have largely ground to a halt for lack of electricity and fuel. Israel imposed a siege on Gaza on Oct. 9 — cutting off water, food, electricity and fuel — in response to the attack on Israel two days earlier by Hamas, the armed Palestinian group that rules the strip.

Survival in Gaza now means not only escaping death from the thousands of Israeli airstrikes that have rained down over the past two weeks, but also finding enough to eat and drink. The United Nations has called the situation a humanitarian catastrophe and has warned that all of Gaza is in danger of running out of water as a result of the Israeli siege.

Walking past a destroyed building in the central Gaza Strip on Monday.Credit...Samar Abu Elouf for The New York Times

Some Gazans are skipping multiple meals just to ensure their children are able to eat. Others have resorted to drinking brackish water or mixing potable water with contaminated water.

The streets are filled with people carrying jugs or bottles to fill whenever they have the chance. The lucky ones have donkey-drawn carts: Few vehicles are on the streets these days as what little fuel is left in Gaza is mostly reserved for ambulances to ferry the dead and injured and to run hospital generators.

Israeli drones buzz in the sky overhead and airstrikes regularly pound the crowded and impoverished territory that is home to more than two million Palestinians. Even after the Israeli military ordered more than a million of them to evacuate the northern half of Gaza and head south ahead of an expected ground invasion, the south has not escaped deadly bombardments.

Every morning, Alee Dababish, 19, leaves the home where she and her family have sought shelter in southern Gaza in search of the day’s water and bread. Her family, including four young children, have been in Khan Younis for 11 days after fleeing their home in Gaza City in the north when airstrikes hit the buildings around them, she said.

Alee Dababish, center right, lining up to buy bread in Khan Younis. At home, she and the other adults often skip meals and go to bed hungry in order to ensure the children can eat, she said.Credit...Samar Abu Elouf for The New York Times

“We come here even as we’re afraid they might strike the bakery, but we have no other choice. We have to come here to feed the children,” Ms. Dababish said on Tuesday while standing in a line with her sister. “We know at any moment they can strike the bakery or around the bakery.”

The head of the Hamas government’s media office, Salama Maarouf, said in a statement on Wednesday that Israeli airstrikes had destroyed a bakery at Al Maghazi refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, hours after UNRWA, the U.N. agency that aids Palestinian refugees, supplied it with flour sacks to make bread for tens of thousands of displaced people.

Four aid convoys that reached Gaza from neighboring Egypt in recent days have brought in water and food.

Mr. Maarouf went on to accuse Israel of bombing 10 bakeries across the Gaza Strip as of Wednesday.

Asked about these allegations, the Israeli military said it “only and specifically strikes military targets. The allegations to the contrary are abhorrent and spread disinformation that put civilians at risk.”

Ms. Dababish said she sometimes waited in line for hours to buy bread and had seen fights break out. Sometimes she walks from bakery to bakery just to buy a loaf. Some don’t have gas to power their ovens while at others the line is too long.

nearly triples in five years

One million children were living in extreme poverty in 2022, according to estimates by a research charity

The number of children living in extreme poverty has nearly tripled in the past five years, according to a new report that lays bare the impact of the cost of living crisis on hard-hit families.

A soaring number of households are skipping meals to save money, borrowing from relatives, and turning to food banks as they struggle to meet their most basic needs, including staying warm and dry, clean and fed.

The report, by the Joseph Roundtree Foundation, shows that a total of 3.8 million people experienced destitution last year – a 61 per cent increase from 2019. The number of children was 1.04 million, up from 362,000 in 2017.

Campaigners and politicians lambasted the findings, with Action for Children calling the crisis a “disgrace that shames us all”.

Tony Lloyd MP, a member of the all-party parliamentary group on poverty, said the scale of the problem is a “scandal”. “Every political party should be saying, ‘We are going to fix this,’ because it is about having a basic standard of decency in our society,” he said.

“No child should have to suffer from a lack of warmth, to live in a home that is not dry, or to not be fed properly. In Britain, the fifth-richest country in the world, these should be the staples of our society.”

Liz Kendall, Labour’s shadow work and pensions secretary, said the report was a “damning indictment of this Conservative government”.

The former children’s commissioner for England, Anne Longfield, warned that there must be an “urgent laser-like focus from within government to tackle child poverty so that we can consign childhood destitution to the history books and Dickensian novels where it belongs”.

A spokesperson for the government said that its “number one priority” was driving down inflation. “We are providing support worth an average of £3,300 per household, including raising benefits by over 10 per cent this year, and are increasing the national living wage again,” they added.

According to the survey, food was the main thing that the poorest families couldn’t afford, with nearly two-thirds of destitute households reporting that they were going hungry.

Single working-age adults were the most likely to be living in destitution, with single parents with children the second worst affected. One mother told researchers that she could only eat one meal a day, while another said she had not done any washing for two weeks because she couldn’t afford washing powder.

Donated children’s jackets at the Hackney Children & Baby Bank centre, ready to be distributed to support families with young children

Rising costs at the supermarket were also affecting families. Mounira, a working mum of two who turned to a local food bank for help, said: “I constantly face the dilemma of having to choose between giving my family a healthy and balanced diet and a healthy social and active life. Our grocery shopping cost has almost doubled, so did our bills, yet our salaries have not followed, so I have had no choice but to seek help.”

London had replaced the North East as the worst-hit region, analysts found. Newham council had the highest level of extreme poverty in the country, with Manchester and Middlesbrough coming second and third respectively.

For the first time in the 2022 study, destitution was broken down by ethnicity, with analysts finding that the rate of destitution among Black respondents was three times higher than their population share.

The report – the fourth in a series of Destitution in the UK studies published regularly in recent years – puts the rise down to a combination of very low incomes, the rising cost of living, and high levels of debt.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation estimates the number of children living in destitution last year at just over a million

But it also said that the social security system is failing to protect people from destitution, with almost three-quarters (72 per cent) of those who were destitute last year being in receipt of benefits.

The report combined an analysis of data with a survey of nearly 4,000 of the poorest households. Out of those surveyed, more than a quarter of households said they had no spare cash at all after they had paid their housing costs. More than half had incomes below £85 per week after they had paid for essentials.

One in 10 respondents were in paid work, with one single man who was working on a zero-hours contract telling researchers how he had sometimes to skip meals because his salary didn’t cover basic expenses.

He said: “I just get a bag of rice, five kilos of rice. That is about £12. I do myself a vegetable stew and normal stew, and leave it in the freezer in small bowls.” He said he tries to have something to eat every day, even if it is just a yoghurt, but “there are days I go without”.

One mother said: “I only eat one meal a day. I’ll probably have a bit of toast when I get home from work, but I won’t eat anything else till tea. The kids will have breakfast, obviously, and then they’re at school for their lunch, but I tend to just eat at night-time because I can’t afford to buy things for me to eat during the day.”

Another said she had noticed a rise in the price of toiletries: “My eldest daughter has a disability and is incontinent at night-time, so she has to wear night-time pads. They’re not covered on the NHS so I have to purchase them myself – they’re £8 for 12 pads.”

One elderly man said he had cut back on buying clothes. “I get clothes from churches and things like that,” he said. “My brother gives me some clothes. I do buy a few trainers and stuff like that, but I haven’t really bought clothes for a long time, to tell you the truth.”

Responding to the report, Action for Children called on the chancellor Jeremy Hunt to “deliver on his manifesto promise to use the benefits system to reduce child poverty”.

Imran Hussain, director of policy at the charity, said: “At an absolute minimum, all benefits must be increased by inflation in the usual way. That this is even in doubt is extremely alarming.”

Charlotte Hill OBE, CEO of the Felix Project, said that the food banks and community projects the charity supports are in desperate need of more food in order to meet increasing demand. She said: “Every single one of the charities we support wants more food, and there are over 650 new organisations on our waiting list that we cannot help.”

Labour MP Lyn Brown said her constituency casework had doubled. “People are in great difficulty, presenting with high levels of debt,” she said. “Schools tell me that children are lucky to get one meal a day at home. Many constituents are working more than one job, and still can’t afford the excessive rents.”

A government spokesperson added: “There are 1.7 million fewer people in absolute poverty than in 2010, including 400,000 fewer children, but we know some families are struggling, which is why we are providing support.”

by Chloë Mesogitis

Thu, October 26th 2023, 4:03 PM MDT

Manufacturing will begin as early as January on the site of the former Weirton Steel.

A new factory is being built in Weirton, promising a greater future for the city.

Form Energy plans to do it by manufacturing large, iron-air batteries, creating a pathway to a reliable, renewable energy grid.

Manufacturing will begin as early as January on the site of the former Weirton Steel.

“We are connecting the old and the new,” said Soufiane Halily, vice president of the project. “We're building a steel battery in steel country. And this reminder is everywhere around us.”

Halily is responsible for designing, building, and launching Form Factory 1.

He took NEWS9’s cameras on a walkthrough, pointing out the intricacies of the build, including 38-foot-tall glass features. The front of the building will be completed with two stories of office and common space.

Halily says the space will have a modern and open feel as you are guided to the main portion, the manufacturing zone, where hundreds of people will work to make the batteries.

"In this area, we're going to have more than 200-foot-long furnaces and presses that help us make our anodes. On the second floor above us, we make our cathodes,” Halily said.

"Everything comes together a few feet away from here. This is where we assembly our cells, then they get assembled into modules.”

It all comes together to create the batteries, which will be used to boost a renewable energy power grid to make it more reliable.

"This is just the tip of the iceberg,” Halily said. “Our goal, is to continue expanding in Weirton and making this one of the biggest battery manufacturing facilities in the world.”

From the 1980s to the early 2000s, oil production in Utah’s remote Uinta basin was in gradual decline. But with the advent of new horizontal drilling technologies, the trend steeply reversed, with oil production rising from a low of 19,000 bpd in 2002 to a high of 87,000 bpd in 2021. Despite that steep, two-decade increase, production volumes have remained mostly flat near 85,000 bpd since 2014. And for good reason: the region produces yellow and black waxy crude oil, a unique substance that cannot move easily by pipeline and requires specialized refineries for processing. Those dueling constraints mean that the nearby refining market in Salt Lake City has historically been the oil’s primary destination, and its waxy crude processing capacity has not grown beyond 85,000 bpd. 

Even amid an era bearing witness to out-of-control climate change—including projections of the near-term disappearance of Great Salt Lake in Utah—oil producers in the Uinta Basin are working overtime to significantly expand production. We covered one proposal—the Uinta Basin Railway project—in an earlier post. If built, that rail line would allow producers to expand production by 130,000-350,000 bpd. Fast on its heals, a new proposal has emerged—known as the Wildcat Loadout expansion project—that would allow an additional 70,000 bpd of Uinta Basin crude oil to access rail lines, while also dangerously increasing tanker truck traffic on local roads between the Basin and the rail loading facility. 

Although new infrastructure remains unbuilt and increasingly controversial, the industry has forged ahead with finding ways to move its product to the one major market capable of handling waxy crudes: the Gulf Coast. Since 2021, production has again begun moving upward, with 2022 production rising extraordinarily to a high of 109,000 bpd. Recent reports suggest this number has grown even further to 135,000 bpd. Despite the high costs of relying on trucks and trains to reach the Gulf Coast, the relatively high cost of oil appears to be allowing Uinta Basin producers to profitably reach distant markets.

The Wildcat Loadout Expansion: Industry's Latest Risky Proposal

The Wildcat Loadout expansion is a proposal by Coal Energy Group 2 LLC to expand the capacity of its waxy crude oil truck to rail transloading facility from 30,000 barrels per day to 100,000 barrels per day. By increasing transloading capacity, the project could spur new output from the Uinta Basin by up to 1 billion gallons per year. If built, increased access to existing rail lines would facilitate oil transport through Colorado and down to refineries along the Gulf Coast in Texas.

So far, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has indicated that it may move forward with a cursory environmental assessment rather than an in-depth environmental impact statement. This was the approach they took in 2014 when they approved the last operating change to the Wildcat Loadout facility. But that approach is woefully inadequate. Already, the 30,000 bpd shipped to the facility require more than 100 tanker trucks traveling south along Highway 191 through the mountains to their transloading destination every day. With the expansion, that number would rise to nearly 360 tanker trucks per day, or a tanker truck every four minutes. 

In August, environmental groups including NRDC delivered a letter to the BLM’s field office in Price, Utah, urging BLM staff to conduct a full Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) given the significant risks this project would create for the Colorado River and significant harms it would inflict on the global climate. Last month, Representative Neguse (CO-2) and Senator Bennett of Colorado wrote a letter to the Director of the BLM, Tracy Stone-Manning, also pressing the agency to prepare an EIS. The letter states that “[t]hese trains are proposed to run for over 100 miles alongside the Colorado River’s headwaters—a vital water supply for nearly 40 million Americans, 30 Tribal nations, and millions of acres of agricultural land.” This proposed facility expansion is a recipe for disaster, and it needs a full and thorough review of its environmental impacts. 

Precious Western Waterways and the Global Climate Can't Tolerate New Oil Infrastructure

The potential impacts for bodies of water cannot be overstated. Over 40 million people across seven states, tribal lands and parts of Mexico rely on the Colorado River for drinking water and irrigation. Though smaller in scope than the related Uinta Basin Railway project, the Wildcat Loadout expansion would allow for one fully loaded unit train of waxy crude oil to travel beside the river’s edge every day. That’s enough to drastically increase the risk of derailment—a fact that demands close study especially since the Uinta Basin Railway project’s EIS predicted a derailment every single year due to increased rail traffic on existing lines. This introduces risk to the water supply of millions of people for the transport of low quality waxy crude oil which would otherwise not have access to a market outside of Utah. The Colorado River also supplies the water necessary to keep the dams at Lake Mead and Lake Powell running, which supply electricity throughout the region.  

Though the BLM has yet to consider the project’s cumulative greenhouse gas emissions, the analysis of the Uinta Basin Railway project is instructive. There, the Surface Transportation Board estimated that the annual greenhouse gas emissions caused by the project would range from nearly 20-53 million tons, depending on a low versus high development scenario. The low development scenario is equivalent to about twice as much new oil production as the Wildcat Loadout expansion would facilitate, though Wildcat would also require a large increase in emissions-intensive trucking to work. Thus, it’s a safe bet that this proposal comes with a 10-million-ton annual greenhouse gas price tag: a price the global climate cannot afford as we barrel headlong toward the 1.5° Celsius warming threshold and the significant and catastrophic consequences breaching the threshold will bring. 

In an era of extended drought across much of the West and greenhouse gas concentrations in our atmosphere leading us to dangerous ecological tipping points, new and expanded fossil fuel infrastructure must not be built. The Wildcat Loadout expansion represents a risky financial bet on high oil prices that locks the Uinta Basin further into its dependence on oil. State and county leaders in the region need a new vision—one that diversifies the local economy, cleans up the mess that a century of oil production has left behind, and charts a course for these communities in a world moving away from oil dependence and addiction. The fragile Colorado River can’t tolerate the risks created by these projects. Neither can the climate. 

Robert Shobe’s lungs tell a different story.

Like a lot of Detroiters, Shobe suffers from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, also known as COPD, a long-term lung ailment that flares up when the air is smoggy or smokey. On those days, Shobe said: “I probably am low on energy, and I feel like I’m seeing a haze in the air.”

Traffic, industrial sources and meteorological conditions often worsen pollution in his part of town. One of Shobe’s closest neighbors is the Stellantis Mack Assembly Plant, where Jeep Wagoneers roll off the line. Since opening a paint shop on the property just over two years ago, it has racked up eight air pollution violations and fines.

So Shobe was baffled when he heard in May 2023 that Detroit had three years of clean air data, and that according to the EPA, the region met strict federal air-quality standards.

Regulators for Wayne county, where Detroit is located, accomplished that feat by removing two of the highest-ozone days from their calculations. They could do that because they had identified a surprising source of dirty air: wildfires burning across the border, in other states and in Canada.

Using a little-known loophole in the Clean Air Act, the Michigan environment, Great Lakes and energy department had made the case to the EPA that pollution on those days stemmed from an exceptional event, defined as something uncontrollable, unlikely to recur and, often, natural: wildfires.

The “exceptional events rule” allows the EPA to strike pollution caused by these events from the record, allowing regulators to meet clean-air goals on paper, without forcing local industry to comply with tighter pollution controls.

In Michigan, a regulator referred to the process as a “magic wand”.

That wand is regularly, if quietly, being waved. An investigation by The California Newsroom, MuckRock and the Guardian found that state and local air-quality managers across the US increasingly rely on the rule to meet air-quality goals because of wildfires.

A review of federal data, as well as thousands of pages of regulatory records, shows that at least 21 million people, including in Michigan, now live and breathe in areas where the EPA has forgiven pollution from at least one “exceptional event”, often a wildfire, since the law took effect. Public contracts and correspondence also reveal how local governments have spent millions in taxpayer dollars to seek forgiveness for pollution related to “exceptional events”, helped at times by industry lobbyists, who pushed for the expansion of the loophole in the Clean Air Act.

From the mountain west to the Rust Belt and into the south, utility, energy and business advocates have worked to promote the rule’s use, aiming to avoid costly emission controls.

It isn’t just industry that benefits, said John Walke, a lawyer with the Natural Resources Defense Council. The non-profit environmental advocacy organization has sued the EPA over its interpretation of the rule. “Loopholes and exceptions [like this one] are treated as get-out-of-jail-free cards for politicians who are balancing economic activities and development with the need for clean air and public health,” he said.

In and out of limbo

This commitment isn’t just for show. Lego sees its core customers as children and their parents, and sustainability is fundamentally about ensuring that future generations inherit a planet as hospitable as the one we enjoy today.

So it was surprising when the Financial Times reported on Sept. 25, 2023, that Lego had pulled out of its widely publicized “Bottles to Bricks” initiative.

This ambitious project aimed to replace traditional Lego plastic with a new material made from recycled plastic bottles. However, when Lego assessed the project’s environmental impact throughout its supply chain, it found that producing bricks with the recycled plastic would require extra materials and energy to make them durable enough. Because this conversion process would result in higher carbon emissions, the company decided to stick with its current fossil fuel-based materials while continuing to search for more sustainable alternatives.

As experts in global supply chains and sustainability, we believe Lego’s pivot is the beginning of a larger trend toward developing sustainable solutions for entire supply chains in a circular economy. New regulations in the European Union – and expected in California – are about to speed things up.

Examining all the emissions, cradle to grave

Business leaders are increasingly integrating environmental, social and governance factors, commonly known as ESG, into their operational and strategic frameworks. But the pursuit of sustainability requires attention to the entire life cycle of a product, from its materials and manufacturing processes to its use and ultimate disposal.

The results can lead to counterintuitive outcomes, as Lego discovered.

Understanding a company’s entire carbon footprint requires looking at three types of emissions: Scope 1 emissions are generated directly by a company’s internal operations. Scope 2 emissions are caused by generating the electricity, steam, heat or cooling a company consumes. And scope 3 emissions are generated by a company’s supply chain, from upstream suppliers to downstream distributors and end customers.

Currently, fewer than 30% of companies report meaningful scope 3 emissions, in part because these emissions are difficult to track. Yet, companies’ scope 3 emissions are on average 11.4 times greater than their scope 1 emissions, data from corporate disclosures reported to the nonprofit CDP show.

Lego is a case study of this lopsided distribution and the importance of tracking scope 3 emissions. A staggering 98% of Lego’s carbon emissions are categorized as scope 3.

From 2020 to 2021, the company’s total emissions increased by 30%, amid surging demand for Lego sets during the COVID-19 lockdowns – even though the company’s scope 2 emissions related to purchased energy such as electricity decreased by 40%. The increase was almost entirely in its scope 3 emissions.

Lego’s tour of how its toy bricks are made doesn’t address the supply chain, where most of Lego’s greenhouse gas emissions originate.

As more companies follow in Lego’s footsteps and begin reporting scope 3 emissions, they will likely find themselves in the same position, realizing that efforts to reduce carbon emissions often boil down to supply chain and consumer-use emissions. And the results may force them to make some tough choices.

Policy and disclosure: The next frontier

New regulations in the European Union and pending in California are designed to increase corporate emissions transparency by including supply chain emissions.

The EU in June 2023 adopted the first set of European Sustainability Reporting Standards, which will require publicly traded companies in the EU to disclose their scope 3 emissions, starting in their reports for fiscal year 2024.

California’s legislature passed similar legislation requiring companies with revenues of more than $1 billion to disclose their scope 3 emissions. California’s governor has until Oct. 14, 2023, to consider the bill and is expected to sign it.

At the federal level, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission released a proposal in March 2022 that, if finalized, would require all public companies to report climate-related risk and emissions data, including scope 3 emissions. After receiving significant pushback, the SEC began reconsidering the scope 3 reporting rule. But SEC Chairman Gary Gensler suggested during a congressional hearing in late September 2023 that California’s move could influence federal regulators’ decision.

SEC Chairman Gary Gensler explains the importance of climate-related risk disclosures.

This increased focus on disclosure of scope 3 emissions will undoubtedly increase pressure on companies.

Because scope 3 emissions are significant, yet often not measured or reported, consumers are rightly concerned that companies that claim to have low emissions may be greenwashing without taking action to reduce emissions in their supply chains to combat climate change.

At the same time, we suspect that as more investors support sustainable investing, they may prefer to invest in companies that are transparent in disclosing all areas of emissions. Ultimately, we believe consumers, investors and governments will demand more than lip service from companies. Instead, they’ll expect companies to take actionable steps to reduce the most significant part of a company’s carbon footprint – scope 3 emissions.

A journey, not a destination

The Lego example serves as a cautionary tale in the complex ESG landscape for which most companies are not well prepared. As more companies come under scrutiny for their entire carbon footprint, we may see more instances where well-intentioned sustainability efforts run into uncomfortable truths.

This calls for a nuanced understanding of sustainability, not as a checklist of good deeds, but as a complex, ongoing process that requires vigilance, transparency and, above all, a commitment to the benefit of future generations.

The mushrooms are harvested in a 55,600-hectare (137,400-acre) buffer zone surrounding the national park during the height of the Southern African country’s wet season, from November to April. After harvesting, the fungi are cleaned, dried, and transported by road to Maputo, the capital, more than 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles) away. There, they’re packaged and sold under the trade name Supa Mama.

This is the first time that native Mozambican mushrooms have been commercialized in the country.

Gilé covers an area of 286,100 hectares (707,000 acres), much of this covered in miombo woodlands that include tree species, like those from the Brachystegia genus, whose roots host mycorrhizal fungi. These underground networks help the trees absorb nutrients and moisture, and announce their presence in the form of diverse fruiting bodies above the ground: mushrooms.

Providing an economic incentive to protect the trees could be key to leaving them standing while promoting the wild mushroom harvest, says Alessandro Fusari, the Mozambique project manager for the François Sommer Foundation–International Foundation for Wildlife Management (FFS-IGF), an organization that co-manages Gilé with Mozambique’s National Administration of Conservation Areas (ANAC).

Communities living around Gilé harvest at least 46 species of mushroom for local consumption. These include eyukuli, the trumpet-shaped khaduve (Lactifluus edulis), and the broad-capped namapele (Lactarius densifolius). So far, a total of five species are being harvested and packed for commercial sale under the project.

“Slowly, the community, especially the women, are learning that keeping the trees standing means having a bigger production of mushrooms,” Fusari tells Mongabay. “Since they’re starting to see commercial results, more and more avoid cutting trees.”

The project, which is supported by the French Development Agency, is in its third year, meaning the team doesn’t yet have the hard data to determine its success. But, Fusari says, the reduction in tree cutting “is a clear trend that is happening.”

Mushroom harvesting around Gilé is typically done by women while out doing other tasks, such as gathering firewood. The mushroom project works with 900 or so members of 30 women’s groups drawn from communities living in the national park’s buffer zone.

Gilé National Park is home to animals that include buffalo, wildebeest, sable, waterbuck, and around 50 elephants. Many of these animals were reintroduced from other areas to rebuild the wildlife wiped out during Mozambique’s 1977-1992 civil war.

The work is ongoing. The park will soon receive another 200 buffalo from Marromeu National Reserve, 350 km (217 mi) to the southwest, to bolster its current population of 150.

While the park’s intact miombo woodlands provide suitable habitat for these animals, shifting agriculture—with farmers working plots until the soil is exhausted, then abandoning them to clear new fields—in the buffer zone along its northern, eastern, and southern boundaries is devastating the trees.

Mushroom harvesting, even for commercial gain, won’t solve that problem alone, Roelens says. Mushrooms are seasonal, and yields can vary dramatically from one year to the next.

“Food security is based on agricultural production, and not on nontimber forest products,” he says.

But giving commercial value to something normally only collected for subsistence is part of a wider program to promote sustainable agriculture.

“That’s part of the strategy: to make the forest more valuable and preserved; it’s a key step in that direction,” Roelens says. Honey is also produced in the buffer zone, and FFS-IGF is piloting a project to raise an indigenous species of snail—the koropa (Achatina fulica)—for sale to local buyers.

The switch in status from partial game reserve to full national park does, however, affect the collection of non-timber forest products like these from across the landscape. When it was still a reserve, community members were allowed inside to harvest mushrooms and honey. Its designation as a national park means that, by law, the area is now out of bounds for anything but tourism and research.

Fusari says there may be a workaround.

His organization plans to have a new management plan for the park ready by year-end, which he hopes will reopen access.

“In this management plan, we will try to insert the possibility to use some nontimber forest products in a sustainable way in certain zones of the park,” he says.

The teams collecting mushrooms have already been trained in sustainable harvesting methods. For instance, they cut rather than pull the mushrooms from the ground, to avoid damaging the mycelium, or root-like structure, beneath the surface; they brush the dirt off the mushrooms wherever they pick them, to leave as many spores there as possible; and the women carry their harvest home in open baskets, to allow spore dispersal along the way.

Meanwhile, research is ongoing to determine the diversity of Gilé’s fungi, and to match local names with species recognized by science.

Nitidae is currently working to include Gilé’s edible mushrooms on an inventory of African tropical species curated by experts at Belgium’s Meise Botanic Garden. So far, 16 have been entered into the database—the first such records from Mozambique.

By Ryan Truscott.