State and Federal Governments are proposing to add $2.4 billion to the Whyalla Steelworks financial disaster, while the man responsible rides into the sunset. Kim Wingerei with the story.
The South Australian government put the Whyalla Steelworks into administration in February 2025, following years of mismanagement and mounting debts – including unpaid royalties – under the leadership of Sanjeev Gupta.
Despite that, Gupta continues to advocate for the “green steel” dream, a potential nightmare if the South Australian and Federal Governments get their way.
Their rescue plan involves support for transitioning the plant from coal-fired to gas-powered. However, that is only feasible if the Government is prepared to subsidise the gas. At current prices, Australian gas is too expensive.
It is, of course, also not “green”. Natural gas emits less CO2 than coal-burning plants in theory (assuming minimal gas leaks), but for the green steel dream to come to fruition, renewable energy is paramount.
Bluescope to bid?
Bluescope Steel (ASX:BSL) is the preferred bidder, holding a right-of-last-refusal in what the SA Government hopes will be a “competitive bidding process”.
But Bluescope is demanding “multibillion-dollar gas subsidies” if it is to proceed with a bid.
At their AGM this week, outgoing CEO Mark Vassella and CEO-elect, Tania Archibald, were both at pains to reiterate the company’s commitment to Net Zero, but neither made mention of the potential for a Whyalla acquisition.
According to a new report by Climate Energy Finance (CEF), “Gas-based production of iron and steel in SA is entirely uneconomic, with gas prices there some of the highest in the gas-producing world.” And as readers of MWM well know (even if Matt Canavan doesn’t), our high gas prices are caused by the gas oligopoly’s siphoning of gas into export markets.
CEF estimates gas supply subsidies for a gas-based Whyalla would exceed $1.7B over a decade, but that may still not be enough to make it competitive.
As the logical supplier of gas to Whyalla, Santos (ASX:STO) would be the principal beneficiary of these subsidies. Over the last ten years, Santos has paid a total of $3.1m in income tax on $42.8B in revenue.
An opportunity missed
CEF’s Matt Pollard told MWM, “The transformation of the Whyalla Steelworks is a generational opportunity, but South Australia stands at a critical juncture. A methane gas-based ‘transition’ would be a grave strategic misstep and misalignment of economic policy with climate objectives, with lasting budgetary and national interest impacts.
Gas is unequivocally not the solution for Whyalla in the interim, nor the long-term.
Green Steel is a massive opportunity for Australia to move up the value chain of steel production while reducing our emissions. South Australia, in particular, is well-positioned with one of the lowest-cost, highest-penetration variable renewable energy grids in the world, with its 72% variable renewable energy penetration.
CEF Director Tim Buckley points out how “global moves to accelerate decarbonisation of global iron and steel supply chains mean Australia faces a massive strategic threat to our top export commodity,” iron ore.
The report’s co-author, The Superpower Institute, led by former ACCC chair Rod Sims and economist Ross Garnaut, echoes those sentiments, “There is an incredible opportunity for Whyalla to become Australia’s first green iron and steelmaking success story. … Government support for a gas option at this point would be a significant misstep.”
As for Sanjeev Gupta, his company, GFG Alliance, gets a $375,000 slap on the wrist by ASIC for late reporting, with the debts he left behind will be paid by taxpayers.
“Self-management a best kept secret”. Dr Sarah Russell investigates the government’s new Home Care package, finds ‘ka-ching’ for private providers.
The Aged Care Royal Commission was blunt about some aged care providers rorting home care packages.
In their final report, the royal commissioners noted that a Level 4 home care package – then worth around $52,000 a year – offered on average less than nine hours a week support for older people.
Meanwhile, older people who managed their own home care package could buy more than double the support – around 20 hours a week.
And now we find out that the Albanese Labor government is enabling aged care providers to take an even bigger cut of the aged care budget, this time via those who self-manage Support at Home.
Self-management has always been a well-kept secret.
Most older people opt for an aged care provider to manage their support workers and suppliers. They simply don’t know there is an option to manage their home care themselves.
Although the new Support at Home program allows older people to self-manage, the rules have changed significantly. So too have payment processes.
In the past, invoices from support workers and suppliers were submitted to the self-managed provider. The provider paid these invoices from the client’s home care package.
The new Support at Home – Self Management Fact Sheet explains that self-management can involve “paying invoices for services and being reimbursed”. As a result, some providers require older people to pay their support workers and suppliers from their own pocket. They are later reimbursed.
This policy assumes people have the cash available to pay for their home care services.
Provider-managed and self-managed care are two fundamentally different approaches to home care. Provider-managed puts the aged care provider in the drivers’ seat. In contrast, self-management is based on shared decision making between the older person their support workers and the self-managed provider.
In my 2021 research Consumer views of self-managed home care packagesolder people described “choice, control and costs” as their main reasons for switching from provider-managed to self-management. They also appreciated being treated as adults.
With self-management, older people were not only able to choose who worked in their home, when they came and what they did but also able to negotiate directly with their support workers about how much they were paid.
Support at Home package expensive
The financial benefits of self-management will be much less with the Support at Home program. From 1 July 2026, older people will no longer be able to negotiate lower rates with support workers or services outside the government approved pricing schedule.
In addition, those who self-manage will be charged an overhead for the third-party service.
This overhead fee has been capped at 10 per cent – with clients encouraged to “negotiate” this fee based on how much work the provider is required to do before paying an invoice (e.g. ensuring the third party supplier meets workforce requirements). Not surprisingly, some providers simply charge their clients a 10 per cent “processing” or “loading” fee on each invoice, irrespective of how much work they did.
Another significant change is the requirement of a co-contribution. With the new system, providers resemble debt collectors – responsible for collecting the government’s co-contribution.
Complex fee-fest
To ensure providers are not out of pocket for this co-contribution, some require their self-managed clients to pay for their support services out of their own pocket and then submit proof of amount they have paid. They are then reimbursed the full amount they have paid less the amount of the co-contribution.
Some providers have changed the payment process for all clients, both those who have been grandfathered (on home care packages) and new clients (on Support at Home).
Take for example an 88 year old pensioner who has a Level 4 home care package. He lives in a remote location with no local aged care provider. His only option is to self-manage. He employs local support workers and suppliers who are all registered with a provider.
Previously, invoices from the registered nurse, support workers and suppliers were submitted to the provider. These invoices were then paid in full from his home care package. The provider charged a monthly administration fee.
Since the recent introduction of Support at Home program on 1 November, his provider has changed the payment process – to ensure the provider collects the co-contribution.
Although this man’s home care package has been grandfathered (i.e. he does not pay a co-contribution), his provider recently asked him to pay his monthly support services from his own pocket. The provider would then reimburse these costs.
Just to be clear, a pensioner is asked to pay around $5,000 per month for his support services, money he does not have. As a result, he has a home care package he can no longer afford to access.
Fortunately, his registered nurse acted as an advocate. The provider agreed to continue to pay the monthly invoices. However, there will undoubtedly be other older people living in remote areas who have an assessed need for support but will be unable to afford to access it.
The Support at Home program has made self-management a much less attractive option.
As a result, providers, not older people, are back in control. Ka-ching.
This post was originally published on Michael West.
Lachlan Murdoch won the battle to follow in his father’s footsteps and obtain control over News Corp, a media conglomerate in decline. Is he up for it? David Tyler asks.
Imagine inheriting a media empire after spending $1.1B per sibling just to buy them off. Then discovering you’ve just spent billions to secure control of something that looks glorious on the surface but is, underneath, a paper tiger gasping for oxygen. That’s Lachlan Murdoch in 2025.
The real story of Lachlan’s consolidation isn’t that he won. It’s that he inherited a media empire at precisely the moment when media empires stopped being empires. A forensic examination of how News Corp became a hollowed-out dynasty, why Lachlan can consolidate control but can’t actually run the thing, and what it means for democracy when the last large-scale independent news organisation enters managed decline.
Rupert Murdoch built an empire on rat-cunning, ruthless leverage, and an almost mystical ability to play politicians and markets like a fiddle. But Lachlan Murdoch, now 52 and finally sitting in the CEO chair, faces a problem Rupert never had to seriously contemplate: what happens when the empire requires actual business acumen to maintain?
Rupert had a superpower: he understood that media power flows from controlling narrative. He was so vast in his hubris that only he could plead humility as the most transparent whopper imaginable. When the News of the World phone-hacking scandal caught him in 2011 and revelations emerged that his journalists had hacked the phone of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler, Rupert went public, saying he was “humbled.” And the world, weirdly, believed him. At least long enough to let him keep most of what he’d built.
When forced to apologise, Rupert learned the vocabulary of contrition. He already knew the performative theatre. Lachlan learned the jargon, but he’s not even a ham actor.
Now imagine trying to navigate Gotham City with half your father’s cunning, one-tenth his ruthlessness, and none of his instinctive grasp of how power actually works. Nor his theatricality. That’s Lachlan Murdoch in 2025; striding through the ruins of a media empire,
cape-less, clueless, and surrounded by villains he can’t even name.
Latter day Uday
There’s something almost tragic in Lachlan Murdoch; or “Uday,” as media critic Richard Ackland memorably nicknamed him in 2003, invoking the image of Saddam Hussein’s son inheriting an empire he couldn’t actually run. Clutching the reins with one hand while the entire media kingdom staggers and weaves like one of those horses that break down in The Melbourne Cup.
Next, the stewards will bring out the screen.
Murdoch’s kingdom was built with ink, intimidation, and insider tips. Today, it’s a property tech company pretending to be a media dynasty, profitable only in the margins while its core business, journalism, dogs and buckles like newsprint in the rain.
Of course, there’s a tragic twist in the tale. In September 2025, after a drawn-out legal brawl in Nevada, Rupert locks in Lachlan’s control of the empire until 2050. Sounds decisive? Hold on. A Nevada court had already ruled in December 2024 that Rupert and Lachlan had acted in “bad faith” trying to amend that supposedly irrevocable family trust.
Bad faith. From a court. That’s not the kind of judgment you want tattooed to your name as you consolidate power.
The family trust circus
The settlement cost serious money: $1.1 billion per sibling to three siblings, meaning roughly $3.3 billion total to buy out their stakes. At first glance, tidy consolidation. But look closer and you’re seeing ego masquerading as strategy. The family trust’s holdings in both News Corp and Fox shrink from roughly 40% to about one-third. That’s material control leaking away, just so Lachlan can wear his father’s rapidly hollowing crown.
And then the coup de grâce arrives. Within weeks of the settlement, the Institutional Shareholder Services; the proxy adviser whose recommendations actually move Wall Street money, tells shareholders to withhold their votes for Lachlan’s reelection to the News Corp board. It isn’t a polite suggestion. They flag his “substantial” pledges of company shares as loan collateral and rip into the dual-class share structure that disenfranchises ordinary shareholders.
Imagine your company’s governance watchdog publicly telling the money managers not to back you. OOPS. That’s not just awkward.
That’s the corporate equivalent of being uninvited from your own party.
The exodus
Two weeks before the shareholder drama landed, Siobhan McKenna, one of News Corp Australia’s top executives and Lachlan’s trusted counsellor for two decades, announced her retirement at the end of 2025. Yes, the Foxtel sale made her role as broadcasting CEO “redundant” in the formal sense. But she was far more than “just another suit.”
McKenna was the architect who steered Sky News and Foxtel through a digital minefield that would have destroyed most managers. She had the technical skill to understand the numbers and the rare capacity to tell Lachlan “no”—and make him listen. That’s not replaceable. That’s gone. Finito. Kaput.
McKenna followed Viet Dinh, the Fox legal mastermind who stepped down in December 2023 after the Dominion Voting Systems settlement ($787.5 million) exposed Fox News’ dangerous liaison with disinformation. Dinh wasn’t just an adviser. He was the architect, the seasoned operator who played the game while Lachlan posed for the company photograph.
Lose one trusted counsellor and it’s bad luck. Lose both within eighteen months, and it’s a more than carelessness. It’s the loss of the architects. It’s Lachlan discovering that he can consolidate control but he can’t actually run the thing.
Can he?
The Foxtel play
When News Corp sold Foxtel to DAZN in April 2025 for a $US2.2B enterprise value, the company dressed it up as strategic brilliance. And fair enough, there’s something to that. They secured $578m in shareholder loan repayment, grabbed a 6% minority stake in DAZN, and scored a board seat. CFO Lavanya Chandrashekar hailed the “balance sheet strength” and the “accretion to earnings per share.”
The numbers look tidy. But here’s the thing: owning a minority stake in someone else’s streamer while your rivals control it isn’t owning the game anymore. It’s a retreat from direct content control, the very guts of News Corp’s Australian legacy, to a position of passive interest.
It’s also a clear signal about what News Corp believes it can actually defend.
Dow Jones (premium business journalism that still has paying readers), Digital Real Estate (particularly REA Group, their 61% stake in the dominant property listings platform), and Book Publishing (HarperCollins, which actually grows). Everything else is being abandoned or contracted. And property bubbles always burst while monopolies get busted.
REA Group is where the real money is now. It dominates residential property listings in Australia, but there’s a problem: it’s currently under ACCC investigation for that very market dominance, with the regulator examining its pricing power and whether it’s exploiting its monopoly position.
News Corp’s profit engine is profitable precisely because it’s monopolistic, and monopolies have political shelf lives. That’s not a stable foundation. That’s a sword hanging by a thread.
Aging readers
Here’s the uncomfortable part nobody wants to say out loud: News Corp’s core readers are old, and they’re not being replaced.
The Australian’s average reader age is pushing toward 65. The Daily Telegraph’s readership skews similarly senior.
These aren’t growing audiences. They’re declining cohorts.
The substitution rate, young readers replacing old readers, is negative across print properties. This isn’t cyclical. This isn’t temporary. It’s a death spiral baked into the demographics.
Digital audiences are younger but fragmented, underpaying, and served by competitors with better technology and deeper pockets. News Corp makes money from premium print readers. Those readers are dying. The replacement cohort prefers TikTok and YouTube. That’s not a market problem. That’s a structural irrelevance.
Political landscape shift
Rupert understood something fundamental: control media and politics will follow. News Corp didn’t just report elections; it made them. Front pages shaped policy decisions, swayed votes, and built governments. That was the real power, not the journalism, nor the game of mates, but the agenda-setting.
That world is gone. Today, News Corp echoes political firebrands instead of shaping the script. Trump doesn’t need the Wall Street Journal; he has Truth Social and an army of podcasters. Real power now accrues to platforms outside traditional media,
to figures News Corp can amplify but not control.
Here’s what’s weird: News Corp’s Australian titles still carry political weight, but their leverage has evaporated. It’s not because they’re silent; they’re louder than ever. It’s because the Senate is now a negotiation chamber, not a rubber stamp.
The cross-bench has learned that Murdoch doesn’t actually control their seat. Labor learned it when they got to government despite News Corp’s best efforts. The Greens and independents never believed it in the first place.
Rupert could make Prime Ministers. Lachlan can influence headlines. That’s not the same thing.
Here’s something Rupert never had to deal with, but Lachlan must: Google and Meta determine what percentage of News Corp’s content actually reaches its intended audience. News Corp publishes 8+ billion page-views monthly, but which readers see those page-views depends on algorithmic decisions made in Silicon Valley that News Corp has no influence over.
Google could reduce News Corp traffic by 50% tomorrow and face no consequences. Meta could down-rank News Corp content to irrelevance. These platforms have all the power; News Corp has none. The company can’t threaten them, can’t negotiate from strength, can’t even ensure distribution of what it publishes.
That’s not just a distribution problem. That’s the complete inversion of the power relationship that built News Corp’s empire.
Let’s be blunt: traditional media is dying
and no amount of Lachlan’s ego or corporate strategy stops it. The business model that fuelled Rupert’s empire – mass audiences, mass advertising, mass influence – is shattered. Audiences have splintered across infinite platforms. Advertisers followed the eyeballs. The cash dried up.
As Hemingway once observed about bankruptcy, it happens “two ways. Gradually, then all at once.” News Corp is in the gradual phase, the phase where earnings still beat consensus and the board still congratulates itself, but the trajectory is unmistakable.
The company’s real growth asset isn’t journalism. It’s REA Group, digital real estate classifieds. News Corp is morphing quietly into a property tech firm with legacy journalism assets that used to subsidise profits but now just burn cash.
That’s not a media company anymore.
It’s a real estate company with very expensive baggage.
A hollow victory
November 2025 earnings did beat forecasts, adjusted EPS of 22 cents versus 19 cents predicted. That’s decent. But look at the longer picture: share price down 7.98% year-on-year and 8.54% in October alone. Not a train wreck yet. More like slow choking. The stock isn’t collapsing; it’s being gradually repriced downward as markets slowly accept that this is a declining business that’s not going to turn around.
News Corp isn’t dead, yet. It’s still profitable. It still owns precious mastheads. It’s still diversified with real growth assets in property tech.
But is it dying? Absolutely. The erosion comes from inside, slow, steady, and structural.
Uday’s, aka Lachlan Murdoch‘s, consolidation looks like a victory on paper. But what is he actually controlling? The keys to a castle whose walls are crumbling.
Republished with permission. Read the full version here.
Lavish spending, a board-room brawl, bullying allegations and a court stoush, a suite of EGMs and doctored documents have the Royal Australasian College of Physicians in crisis. Michael West investigates.
On June 26, directors and top executives from the Royal Australasian College of Physicians (RACP) gathered for dinner at the swish Bambini Restaurant nestled above Sydney’s Hyde park within the grand sandstone of the St James Trust Building.
The bill came to around $6,000 so the top brass must have partaken of Bambini’s ‘award-winning wine list’ as well as its captivating culinary experience, sophisticated ambience and ‘Parisian charm’. It was a convivial evening whose festivities did not portend the intrigue which was to follow.
Move against whistleblower
The very next day, the chair Jennifer Martin and her allies called for an extraordinary general meeting to split the role of RACP president and chair, a move designed to stop popular director turned whistleblower Dr Sharmila Chandran from becoming chair of the Board.
This set in train a tumultuous board stoush at the top of Australia’s peak medical body with allegations of bullying and dubious corporate practices which has since spilt into the courts, the court even closing proceedings to the media.
Documents obtained by MWM show alarming irregularities in corporate governance by the Board, including excessive spending, altered Minutes of Meeting, failure to keep the RACP’s 32,000 members informed and the ignoring of external legal advice on good governance.
Fair Work secret bullying proceedings
Fast forward four months and at a three-day hearing of the Fair Work Commission in October Dr Chandran, who had brought whistleblower claims of bullying against the chair Professor Martin, was herself grilled in the witness box for two and a half of those days.
Chandran was the only witness to be cross examined and, not only did counsel for the College succeed in their request to close the Court for confidentiality, the whistleblower’s lawyers were not permitted to question the other side.
Curiously, the media was turfed out at the request of the RACP and, despite Dr Chandran’s claim of bullying in the workplace, she was forced to endure a harrowing 15 hours in the witness box. The matter has been held over until next year.
In the meantime, in the wake of the Fair Work hearing, Dr Chandran was re-elected with a handsome majority to the Board, despite the Board’s efforts to depose her.
An EGM … make that three
The next chapter in this extraordinary board spat is likely to draw the ire of many of the College’s members as another EGM is set down for later this month, November 26, at which the Board is again attempting to have her removed as a director.
All this has come at a high cost, and staff at RACP have come under enormous pressure.
MWM has obtained evidence which shows an extravagant spend by the Board, an extravagant over-spend that is above the RACP Governance Budget, on lawyers and EGMs.
Among the more than $1m in estimated costs is $250,000 on the three EGMs brought to stop Dr Chandran from becoming chair and well over $300,000 for law firm Norton Rose Fulbright.
MWM has put questions to RACP (see questions and responses below). RACP did not directly respond to questions but chair Professor Martin provided a statement which said the College “remained committed to good governance” and noted in respect of the treatment of Dr Chandran:
“College funds have not been used to “shut down” any person. All actions taken by the Board have been directed to ensuring the proper functioning of governance.”
Jigging the Charter
Further to the governance saga, MWM has viewed changes made by the Chair to the RACP Charter. The new Charter of May 2, 2025 made many changes including inserting clauses to provide for the chair and/or the treasurer to investigate directors. It is an unusual conflict of interest for, for instance, a chair to spend an organisation’s resources to personally investigate a director.
It is also unusual, perhaps counter to the Corporations Act (S203C), for the Board to have powers to dismiss a director. Normally, it is the Regulator who deploys this power, not directors of a company.
The squeamish Requisition
In September 2025 The Board announced it had 100 ‘requisitioners’ signed up to remove Dr Chandran and, later in the same month, announced the second EGM called to remove her, yet the Board did not publish the list of requisitioners to members.. MWM has seen governance advice by an external law firm saying the Board had a legal obligation to ‘publish the lists’.
Tensions had been festering for some time on the College Board. At the meeting in May this year, things had boiled over when the company secretary was impeded in doing her job and the Chair sought to control who was in and out of the meeting.
According to sources, the Chair removed comments made at the meeting made by Dr Chandran even though they had been included earlier in the minutes, as is routine corporate governance practice, by the company secretary.
Having spent $250,000 already on two EGMs to remove Dr Chandran, unsuccessfully, another estimated $200,000 will be spent by the RACP on the November meeting, again with the aim of removing the whistleblower from the Board.
The only resolution of the looming November meeting is to remove her, this despite the failed motion on October 31 where Dr Chandran romped back in with 65% of the vote (8,200 votes) despite all the Chair’s efforts.
Response to questions by Professor Jennifer Martin, chair of Board and President of RACP
We recognise the importance of transparency and accountability in all aspects of governance.
In recent years, like many member-based organisations, the RACP has faced complex governance issues and at Board level a high degree of conflict, and recently, disruption. This has required independent legal and procedural advice. All expenditure has been approved in accordance with financial delegations and subject to external audit.
Expenditure on independent professional advice or meetings convened under the Corporations Act has been necessary to uphold those obligations, not to advance any individual interest.
College funds have not been used to “shut down” any person. All actions taken by the Board have been directed to ensuring the proper functioning of governance.
The ACNC and ASIC continue to have independent oversight of the College and its directors.
It’s inappropriate to comment publicly on internal deliberations or on individual directors’ remarks. The College’s governance processes include mechanisms for any director to raise concerns about minutes, and those processes were followed.
We remain committed to transparency and good governance but not at the expense of appropriate Boardroom confidentiality and will continue to report financial and governance performance through audited annual reports and communications to members.
The questions which were asked
MWM has seen email evidence of significant RACP governance spending above Budget (c $1m), much of it has been spent on lawyers and EGMs dealing with the Dr Chandran matter. Could the chair provide her view on how this level of spending of members’ money is justified?
Do you agree that this amounts to spending money to shut Dr Shandran down?
MWM has viewed changes made by the Chair to the RACP Constitution. The new Charter of May 7, 2025 made a lot of changes. How do you justify the changes in 11.2 which provide for directors to have each other investigated? Is it a conflict of interest for the Chair to spend College resources investigating a director (11.2)?
11.3 provides that a director found to be in breach can be dismissed by the Board. Is it not the Regulator, rather than the Board, which has and should have the powers to dismiss a director (Corps Act 203C)?
According to the KWM governance advice to RACP regarding the requisitioners to remove Dr Chandran, the Board has an obligation to “publish the lists”. Has this been done, and if not why not?
Should not this information be available to all RACP members?
Could you please provide the names of those 100 who signed the requisition?
Regarding the Board meeting in May, could RACP please explain on what basis the Chair altered the minutes of the meeting afterwards, adding that “the Chair abstained” from a vote on the RAO report? Also, why were comments made by Dr Chandran removed from the minutes?
Was a complaint made about the changing of the Minutes, and how was this complaint dealt with?
Has the Board taken legal advice on the Chair altering minutes of meeting and regarding the changes to the Constitution? What is this advice and who provided the advice?
Trelawney Parish sits in a rural, agricultural region of Western Jamaica that borders the country’s largest contiguous rainforest. Under normal circumstances, the parish is relentlessly green — covered in lush vegetation and long rows of orange trees — but the aftermath of Hurricane Melissa has “almost completely annihilated” the area, according to firefighter Ronell Hamilton. “Everything here is brown right now. It looks like California.”
The strongest storm to strike Jamaica in recorded history, Melissa arrived on the island last week as a Category 5 storm with wind speeds of 185 miles per hour. As of press time, at least 67 people had been killed — 32 in Jamaica, 34 from flooding in Haiti, and one in the Dominican Republic — and thousands of homes have been flattened. In Black River, a coastal community south of Trelawney that is being called the storm’s epicenter, an estimated 90 percent of structures were destroyed. Thirty miles north, in Wakefield, Hamilton says that even buildings built to serve as hurricane shelters, such as the school and the fire station, were severely damaged.
Climate change is making monster storms like Melissa more powerful by supercharging the meteorological elements in which they thrive: Warming ocean waters feed hurricanes, as does warming air. Studies have shown that the atmosphere can hold 7 percent more moisture for every 1 degree Celsius of warming. Elevated wind speeds allow storms to carry more moisture as well, leaving devastating flooding in their wake. A rapid analysis from Imperial College London found that climate change made a massive storm like Melissa 4 times more likely. Another report from the research group World Weather Attribution found that it increased wind speeds by 11 percent and rainfall by 16 percent relative to a world without global warming.
Early estimates indicate the storm may have caused up to $4 billion in insured losses and about $7 billion total in Jamaica alone. Much of the country is still without electricity or cell phone service and many roads remain impassable, so the full extent of the destruction has yet to be evaluated.
As wrenching as the storm has been, Jamaica is well aware of its vulnerabilities in a warming world and has spent decades carefully planning for just this kind of a scenario. As a result, it’s in a unique position to secure many of the resources it needs for its recovery. The country has built up a multi-layered system of financial protection since Hurricane Gilbert hit in 1988 and, experts say, its response could serve as a model for other island nations looking to build secure financial infrastructure that will ensure they can respond to disasters quickly.
At the center of this system is a $150 million “catastrophe bond,” which the country first issued to investors in 2021 and renewed last year. It will now be paid out in full to help support the country’s recovery. Catastrophe bonds appeal to investors because they offer a high reward in the form of elevated interest rates, in exchange for high risk — namely, the risk that the catastrophe will occur and trigger a monster payout from the investors. The bonds are generally set to expire in three to five years. If no disaster occurs during that period, the investors recover their initial investment as well as the exorbitant interest it has accrued. But if a storm does hit, all of the money goes to the affected country.
These bonds are attractive to buyers because they’re totally disconnected from the rest of the financial market; during the Great Recession that began in 2008, for example, catastrophe bonds became a popular financial instrument because they were still producing high yields even as benchmark interest rates were nearly 0 percent. And if all goes well, they can be enormously lucrative. They’re attractive to countries like Jamaica, because they can be triggered according to parametric standards, meaning once a storm hits a predefined limit, such as central pressure at or below 900 millibars, the money is automatically released.
The catastrophe bond market has been growing since Hurricane Andrew hit Florida in 1992. At the time, it was the most expensive natural disaster in U.S. history, and insurance proved unable to cover the full cost of the storm. “The idea was to then put some of that risk into the financial markets,” said Carolyn Kousky, associate vice president for economics and policy at the Environmental Defense Fund. Jamaica is unique, said Kousky, because it has “made this really beautiful stack [of financing tools] to cover disasters.”
In addition to the catastrophe bond, the country has built up its own emergency contingency budget, taken out parametric insurance with the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility, or CCRIF, and prearranged for a credit line in case of emergencies. (The CCRIF policy pays out rapidly for a range of types of hurricane damage, whereas the catastrophe bond is only triggered by the most extreme storms.) This level of planning, said Kousky, grew out of a “growing recognition that relying on disaster aid is not a great strategy, because disaster aid often takes a long time to get to countries and can sometimes be ill matched to need.” A steady stream of pre-secured cash can help vulnerable nations better navigate these kinds of horrific events.
“The question is whether this would be available again,” said Sara Jane Ahmed, the managing director and finance advisor to the V20 Ministers of Finance, which represent the world’s most climate-vulnerable economies, who warned that a payout so large could scare off financial interests. Ahmed added that rebuilding with more resilient infrastructure could help make a new bond more appealing.
Investing in catastrophe bonds is essentially playing Russian Roulette with air pressure — even a storm as strong as Hurricane Beryl, which made landfall near Jamaica last year as a Category 4, did not quite meet the threshold for a payout. And as climate change causes storms to grow stronger, investors could shy away from catastrophe bonds or insist on even higher interest rates and more stringent metrics for a payout.
“People are looking for a silver bullet for all these things and everything has a tradeoff,” said Jeff Schlegelmilch, director of Columbia University’s National Center for Disaster Preparedness.
“The biggest problem with catastrophe bonds is that they come after the disaster, not before, to prevent it from happening, [which] is where the money is needed most,” he said, pointing to infrastructure upgrades, seawalls, and other hurricane-proofing measures as areas where catastrophe bond investors could also support adaptation efforts before the storm — and reduce their own risk of a bond payout in the process. “If these same companies are investing in catastrophe bonds, and they don’t want to see the payouts, then better investment in preventing the disaster to begin with is the best way to kind of protect that investment. We need it on all sides.”
The question of how to pull investors into the adaptation market is “an ongoing challenge,” said Kousky. “When you invest in climate adaptation and risk reduction … you’re reducing future losses, but avoided losses are not really a cash flow.”
Tweaking catastrophe bonds to direct a small amount of their interest back to the issuing state or country could offer one solution. On Oak Island in North Carolina, for example, the North Carolina Insurance Underwriting Association has sponsored a catastrophe bond that includes a resilience feature. When no catastrophe strikes and investors collect their yearly returns, a portion of their profits are put towards funding home hardening upgrades, like hurricane-fortified roofs.
“We’re always going to have disasters,” said Schlegelmilch. “But they don’t have to be as bad as they are.”
How Jamaica’s recovery will play out on the ground remains to be seen. The damages look like they will exceed even the country’s carefully planned financial safety net. A week after the storm, “there’s still no electricity, still no water,” said Hamilton, the firefighter in Trelawney Parish. “Food is running out.”
Editor’s note: The Environmental Defense Fund is an advertiser with Grist. Advertisers have no role in Grist’s editorial decisions.
Sports podcasters who “ought to know better” are enthusiastically promoting online gambling (with all its consequences). Andrew Gardiner reports.
Still looking for that tiny corner of Australian society, politics and sports media our ubiquitous gambling industry hasn’t reached? Here’s a pro tip: sports podcasts aren’t where you’re likely to find it.
Problem gambling has established causal links with depression, anxiety and suicide. Yet sports podcasters – some of whom revealed their own experiences of mental illness not long ago – have been happy to take the money and shut up about problem gambling.
Take former AFL ruckman/forward Daniel Gorringe (who revealed last year he “wanted to be injured” to avoid the pressure of performing up to his status as a top 10 draft pick) and his former co-host (and teammate) Dylan Buckley, who spoke of “vomiting and intrusive thoughts” pre-match, at one stage wishing he would be hurt on-field “and not have to play for six weeks”. Gorringe hosts Dan Does Footy, Australia’s top sports podcast.
Axed by Carlton in 2017, and out of the AFL, Gorringe found himself with “nothing in the bank, no purpose anymore … and it got to a real bad spot where I was seriously considering not wanting to be here”.
An ambassador for mental health training program Tackle Your Feelings, he shows clear empathy for those who have been on the journey – common among athletes – of performance anxiety and severe depression.
The elephant in the studio
But what of others among the one in six Australians who seriously contemplate suicide, who weren’t elite athletes and took a different path to that same dark place? On air at least, the now-feuding Gorringe and Buckley ignore the elephant in the studio: problem gambling, a known suicide precursor.
“Together we ride the wave of each bet,” he told Sportsbet’s website. That’s right, readers: Daniel Gorringe, ‘independent’ podcaster with experiences of suicidal ideation, is the online face of Sportsbet, a leading gambling website accused of promoting a known cause of suicide.
Sportsbet also sponsors Gorringe’s NRL counterpart, Get ‘Em Onside, where the website’s trader, Sean, previews the weekend’s rugby league betting action. Its sponsorship dollars don’t end when the footy does, with popular cricket podcast The Grubs also a member of the vast Sportsbet stable.
Get ‘Em Onside
In return, Gorringe and former NRL playmaker Joel Caine (from Get ‘Em Onside) provide insights, tips, and betting analysis via the company’s online tipping platform.
Not to be outdone, Buckley co-founded Producey, a podcast producer, and Clubby, a sports network which “helps brands reach one of the hardest audiences to market to and connect with – the 18-34 year old male”. There, he was joined by Sportsbet’s former head of partnerships, Adam Pattison.
Podcasts on the Clubby roster include 200 PLUS, another Sportsbet cohort which went to extraordinary lengths to promote the thorny sport of greyhound racing by buying an actual greyhound, Conqueror, and offering shares in the dog to its audience. “Keep up to date with all things racing and the people’s dog, Conqueror!”, the podcast proudly proclaims.
Another Clubby stablemate, comedian Broden Kelly (who hosts The Footy with Bro), explains gambling’s sway over sports podcasters. Success in that medium is “hard to sustain unless you’re at the ABC or take gambling money”, he posted.
“Gambling companies target vulnerable creators and their ad space”.
Image: Andrew Gardiner
Media and law graduate ‘Tim’ of Adelaide, who brought MWM’s attention to what he called Gorringe and others’ “hypocrisy” on gambling, hit rock bottom himself just 12 months ago. “I attempted suicide in October 2024 and I am so glad that I failed; I love my life (and) am now at a stage where I feel I can help others”, he said.
Saturation gambling ads in sports (which target 18-34 year old males like Tim) are a particular peeve of his. Tim finds it hard to believe young men like Gorringe, who contemplated suicide, can promote activities that place others in danger of the same fate.
He also loathes politicians who effectively turn a blind eye. “MPs from both of the major parties take blood money from gambling websites, so they’re allowed to operate unregulated. It’s disgusting,” he said.
Yet … gambling ad reforms stalled
Canberra has yet to formally respond to the 31 recommendations in 2023’s ‘You win some, you lose more’ report, such as an hour-long blackout on ads before live sports broadcasts, and a limit of two ads per hour outside of this. Nonetheless, arguments for some kind of regulation seem compelling: the Victorian Responsible Gambling Foundation says there were 948 gambling ads daily on the state’s free-to-air television in 2021.
But Tim says any new regulations on ads won’t impact the gambling companies’ online presence, adding that whatever rules emerge will do little to slow down the juggernaut that is online sports betting.
Tim and MWM sent a number of questions to Clubby Sports, the most urgent of which were whether or not the company had put in place any strategies to mitigate the downside of sports betting, and what it was doing to support young males struggling with their mental health. We had not heard back from them by publication time.
“I watched (September’s AFL Grand Final) with 20 of my best mates”, Tim said. “About 80 per cent of the room placed bets on the game through the Sportsbet app”.
“That was harrowing”.
Isolated … trapped
A case study on the influence and impact of online sports betting is ‘Jack’, whose shocking story aired on The Imperfects podcast in 2023. Listeners were shocked by some of the tactics employed by companies to exploit ’Jack’s’ vulnerability.
“When I was at my worst and I didn’t have much money to my name … they would call me every couple of days”, ‘Jack’ said. “I had a personal contact at the betting company and they’d call me and they’d say, ‘Jack if you deposit $100, we’ll give you $300 extra dollars, could you do that now?’”.
“I was living pay to pay, as a gambler I would get sucked in. So I’d deposit (the money) and that money would last maybe a couple of hours max and then I’d be back to square one”.
“At one point, I got a phone call: ‘Jack, do you enjoy your AFL? We can see you bet on it quite a bit. Do you want a couple of tickets to the footy this weekend? You can come into the box’.”
“Because I felt so isolated and trapped from my gambling (addiction), having that person (make an offer like that) made me feel special”. But ‘Jack’ knows the low points, too, where that short-term buzz of excitement gives way to a brutal reality of financial strain, relationship problems, mental health decline, stress-related health issues, potential legal entanglements and, yes, thoughts of self-harm or suicide.
‘Jack’ is just one of the 9.3 per cent of Australian men (and rising) who bet on sports, a large number of whom wind up attempting suicide. “(It’s) the sure way of getting nothing for something”, American playwright Wilson Mizner once wrote.
The process of recruiting vulnerable Australians like Jack begins with the galaxy of retired stars and media personalities on the sports gambling payroll, happily providing tips or producing content on anything from television screens to streaming audio. But Tim’s especially venomous when it comes to podcasters with mental health histories of their own.
“Daniel Gorringe contemplated suicide, and Dylan Buckley was in a tough place too. They ought to know better”.
Electricians working on the national smart meter rollout told MWM in June that low rates were putting lives at risk. Now, they report things are getting worse. Zach Szumer with the story.
The nation’s accelerated smart meter rollout could turn tragic or face a shortage of workers, with a fresh round of rate cuts further worsening conditions in the sector, electricians have told MWM.
The government wants every house in Australia to be fitted with a smart meter by 2030 and, with less than 50 per cent of homes in states like NSW, SA and QLD having the new meters, new rules have been introduced to speed up the rollout.
Already, homeowners in much of Australia can no longer refuse to have a smart meter installed, and a new round of additional rules will kick in on December 1
By that date, over 170 meter installers will also have to find a new source of income as the company they work under has lost its contract with Intellihub – a metering company co-owned by massive private equity firms Brookfield and Pacific Equity Partners.
One Service Stream contractor, Richard, told MWM the company “didn’t think it was ethical to lower rates any further than what they were based on the work that we do and that cost them the contract”.
Some said the news came as a shock, as they had been told in August 2023 that Service Stream had secured a four-year agreement with Intellihub.
MWM has seen a copy of a 1 August 2023 email confirming the announcement.
The big squeeze
As we reported, low pay rates were “driving technicians to rush work under unsafe conditions that could lead to serious injury or death,” as one put it.
Many believe Intellihub’s latest round of rate cuts will make things worse.
One Service Stream contractor, Francis*, told MWM: “Intellihub’s just squeezing the companies below them like Service Stream and then Service Stream squeezes us as the techs.”
However, he doesn’t have much hope that change will come from above. “I don’t think anything’s going to happen unless something tragic happens,
like someone dies or some damage to property occurs …
“In terms of people cutting corners, because rates have dropped quite a lot, quite substantially, some techs have said to me things like, ‘Oh, I just skip the testing altogether if I have to, if I’m running too far behind’”.
“I’m sure not every technician is doing that, but at the end of the day, if you rush people enough and they’re going backwards and they’re losing money because they’re not completing enough jobs because the jobs aren’t paid well enough, then of course people are going to skip steps”.
Another Service Stream contractor, Alexander*, said “deaths from electrical shock, houses burning down for electrical faults” were possible if things continued as they are.
Several electricians said the new rates – which flatten out the extra pay they previously received for ‘additional services’ – gave them far less incentive to repair electrical faults they discovered during installations.
Accelerated rollout speed bumps?
Both Francis and Alexander said the accelerated smart meter rollout could suffer from an exodus of qualified technicians.
“With rates where they are today, with the changes, I don’t see why anyone would want to stay in the industry,” Francis said.
Alexander said,
it’s very hard to see businesses being profitable on the rates that are being offered.
“But I feel that some people, unfortunately, might be forced into having to take those options, and I feel that that’s kind of what Intellihub are hoping.”
“I feel it’s been a very selective and devious decision to employ these new standards, if you will, so close to Christmas, when everybody’s really relying on getting those funds in at that time of year”.
Roger*, who works for a company that will continue to work with Intellihub, agreed, saying: “I reckon a lot of people will quit”.
Based on the new Intellihub contractor rate card he’d been given, his income would decrease by around 30 per cent, he said.
“I won’t return to metering based on these numbers; it’s too unsafe and underpaid.”
He said the situation was redolent of the federal government’s pink batts scheme, the Rudd-Labor government’s rollout of home insulation that led to multiple deaths and hundreds of house fires.
Who’s watching the market?
Several months ago, after hearing electricians’ concerns about Intellihub’s growing dominance of the metering industry, MWM sought data on the company’s market share from the three bodies that oversee Australia’s energy markets.
All three – the Australian Energy Market Commission, Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) and Australian Energy Regulator (AER) – said they didn’t have this information.
Intellihub was also contacted – and asked about its market share, as well as a response to electricians’ complaints – but has yet to provide an answer.
Several years ago, an Intellihub representative provided the ACCC with an estimate that, as of 31 December 2022, the company had a roughly 20-30% share of smart meters deployed to energy retailers across the National Energy Market.
*All names have been changed at the request of those interviewed.
This post was originally published on Michael West.
“Keeping perspective” is Michael Pascoe’s mantra. He writes that AI mania has not just warped perspective, it risks blowing up reality.
Over more decades than I care to count of market watching and reporting, I haven’t seen a time when there’s been more wide-spread conviction that we’re experiencing a dangerous bubble that’s sure to pop, yet the money keeps pouring in to inflate it.
The lead up to the “Crash of 87”, now viewed in the rearview mirror as a minor hiccup, was relatively muted. Not even the “dot bomb” bubble at the turn of the century, when all a company had to do to get a share price boost was to add “e” or “dotcom” to its name, was as widely perceived as over-cooked as the present outlook.
“This time it’s different”
This time round there is vastly more money chasing itself with a circular investment boom at its core built on promises of revolution and, inevitably, that “this time it’s different”. This time round there are trillions of dollars being splurged on a heady mix of momentum riding, FOMO (fear of missing out), and massive bets that the first movers will win all.
There are the market telltales of sky-high valuations for inexperienced startups merely intending to build data centres or AI-somethings, but they are sideshows, mere flotsom that will be blown away when the reckoning occurs, as the shells and frauds were when the dot bomb burst.
As a general rule, things tend to turn out to be not as bad as you fear or as good as you hope.
This time round, the hope is about the level of bad.
The serious game is the impact both the reckoning and the AI promises will have on the real economy, on employment and wealth. That’s where the potential is for a GFC-scale event, not a piddling ’87 or dot bomb.
And this time round, still carrying the cost of all their COVID efforts, governments and central banks will be less able to ameliorate the pain. We’re already reaping the result of a global easing cycle with global government deficit spending fuelling asset inflation with its subsequent wealth effect. After what was, with the benefit of hindsight, overcompensation during COVID, the ammo isn’t there to fight another shock.
Two quite different articles this month have highlighted the impossibility of the nirvana being promised by the AI investment promoters. Former colleague Alan Kohler writing for the ABC was the bleakest, seeing a future where a GFC-size bust is the least-worst option.
Returns not there
The other is a note to clients by independent economist Gerard Minack showing the AI spend simply can’t generate the returns for investors to justify it.
I’ll come back to that. Kohler first, adding the AI and crypto bubbles together for frightening numbers:
Somewhere between $3 trillion and $6 trillion has been invested in building AI infrastructure and software, and that has been responsible for almost all US economic growth over the past year.
The top 10 American AI companies have provided most of the US stock market’s gains over the past two years and are now valued at $35 trillion, almost half the total market.
Meanwhile there are 20,000 cryptocurrencies worth $5.8 trillion, of which Bitcoin represents more than half.
The total cash in the AI and crypto bets is more than a quarter of global GDP; it’s probably the greatest technology investment boom/bubble in history.
No probably about it, in my opinion. It would not take a total crash to send shocks through the financial and real economies.
Jobs armageddon the quid pro quo
But Kohler’s Doomsday outcome is that it would be worse if the investment ends up being justified by profits created as it would create massive longterm unemployment for the many while the very few at the top continue on their present path of becoming even more unimaginably rich.
Gerard Minack’s note has a smaller focus and thus more concrete outcome: there’s a lot of capital being burned.
Minack limits his numbers to the “AI8” listed entities, Alphabet, Oracle, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, Broadcom, Nvidia and Palantir. In this bubble phase, investors keep rewarding companies that increase planned AI-related investment spending. But:
“The larger the investment spend, the greater the revenue that will need to be generated to ensure an adequate return on that investment. In my view that revenue hurdle is already implausibly high. Whatever the technical wonders that AI will generate, the investment returns will disappoint. That will inevitably lead to significant market losses.”
Greatly simplyfying Minack’s analysis, the AI8 will conservatively have investment stock of more than US$1 trillion by the end of next year. That’s allowing for 20 per cent depreciation on an investment spend heading above US$2 trillion in 2027. (And a reminder that this is ignoring the investment spending of unlisted companies such as Open AI.)
$1T for a 10% return
So how much revenue will their AI businesses need to generate to get a reasonable return on this stock of invested capital? I’ll skip the details of Minack’s figuring but AI would need revenue of some US$925 billion a year to achieve a modest 10 per cent return on invested capital. And that return compares with the hyper-scalers’ current 25 per cent ROIC.
By comparison, Minack quotes Praetorian Capital’s Harry Kupperman’s observation that the incredibly successful Microsoft Office 365 subscription services had revenue of US$94 billion last year.
“In other words, to achieve an average ROIC, the AI industry will need to support 7-10 firms with businesses as widely deployed, and widely subscribed to, as Office 365.”
And then it gets harder. If the hyper-scalers’ current 50 per cent gross margin falls closer to the S&P500 average, they would require additional revenue of US$1.2-$1.6 trillion. As Minack concludes, “good luck with that”.
A further complication is that AI will cannibalise much of the hyper-scalers’ existing businesses.
I would further speculate about what competition between that many players would do to margins. There’s also the well-reported phenomenon of much of the AI splurge being circular – the major players are hanging out and taking in a lot of each other’s washing.
Show me the money
It’s all good fun until investors reach the imminent “show me the money” stage and the music stops.
That’s when the big boys take a hit and the fringe players, the bubble startups, lose their shirts.
As for the concurrent crypto-bubble, RBA Governor Bullock last week pointed to the challenge for the financial system’s security if quantum computing ever effectively works.
“If you believe what they say on the tin of quantum computing, what takes 200 years to decrypt now, to break, will take a matter of minutes. So it is a big threat,” she said.
Decrypted crypto is no crypto at all.
And the Toddler King
Then there is the little matter of the world’s biggest economy being run by a febrile toddler king and a mob of self-enriching accomplices.
It all adds up to the biggest mystery: how markets are so willingly charging higher to yet more records regardless of risk with the biggest gains at the riskiest end.
On one hand there’s the view that the reckoning is always a little further off. On the other, the second law of “old bond dog” Anthony Peters comes to mind:
“Nobody gets fired for being long a falling market, but woe betide anyone short a rising market.”
Starmer’s announcement on visit to Ankara comes as jailed opposition leader Ekrem İmamoğlu faces fresh charges
Britain has agreed to sell 20 Typhoon fighter jets to Turkey in an £8bn deal despite concerns about alleged human rights violations by its government.
Keir Starmer signed the deal during a visit on Monday to Ankara to meet the country’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The prime minister said the deal would boost the Nato alliance, despite criticism of Turkey’s increasingly authoritarian administration.
Ministers hope to secure a deal with the Gulf Cooperation Council that could add £1.6bn to the UK economy
Rachel Reeves will lead a delegation of senior business leaders to Saudi Arabia on Monday as she hopes to deepen the UK’s relationship with a state that has been widely criticised for human rights abuses.
She is the first UK chancellor to visit the Gulf in six years and is expected to meet senior Saudi royals, US administration representatives and global business figures.
New Zealand’s Space Minister Judith Collins was warned just two months into Israel’s war on Gaza that new BlackSky satellites being launched from NZ could be used by that country’s military, reports Television New Zealand’s 1News.
According to a network news item on Friday, government documents showed officials had recommended the launches go ahead in spite of risks, saying there were no restrictions on trade with Israel.
Minister Collins gave the green light and RocketLab began launching the the Gen-3 BlackSky satellites from Mahia Peninsula earlier this year.
In the documents, obtained by 1News political reporter Benedict Collins under the Official Information Act, Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment officials said while there were risks, the positives outweighed the negatives.
The officials’ advice on the satellite launches stated: “While it poses risks, there is a net good associated with commercially available remote sensing due to the wide range of applications,” 1News said.
One risk they identified related to Israel, but they said there were mitigating factors.
“There are no United Nations Security Council sanctions on Israel, and New Zealand does not implement autonomous sanctions outside the context of the conflict in Ukraine,” they advised the minister.
“There are also no policy restrictions on New Zealand’s trading relationship with Israel.”
World court warnings
However, over the two years of war on Gaza since 7 October 2023, several nonbinding legal opinions by the world’s highest court and UN agencies have warned Israel about its illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories and also warned countries and companies about complicity with the pariah Zionist state.
In the latest ruling this week, the International Court of Justice said Israel was obliged to ease the passage of aid into Gaza, stressing it had to provide Palestinians with “basic needs” essential to survival.
The wide-ranging ICJ ruling came as aid groups were scrambling to scale up much-needed humanitarian assistance into Gaza, seizing upon a fragile ceasefire agreed earlier this month.
Another court in The Hague, the International Criminal Court (ICC), has issued arrest warrants for Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.
According to 1News, the NZ documents also show that when MBIE officials recommended the application be approved they were aware experts at the UN were warning a possible genocide could unfold in Gaza and that schools and hospitals were being bombed.
‘Appalling’ decision
The officials’ advice came in December 2023, two months after the Hamas attacks on Israel which left 1200 people dead. Israel in response launched a retaliatory offensive in Gaza that has killed more than 68,000 people, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
Minister Collins said this week the decision had been the right one.
“We don’t have sanctions on Israel, we’re not at war with Israel, Israel is not our enemy,” she said.
But Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick said it was an “appalling” decision that could fuel human rights abuses, reports 1News.
Officials at New Zealand’s space agency declined to be interviewed by 1News about Blacksky and RocketLab did not respond to a request for an interview with its founder Sir Peter Beck.
A wave of similar AI-generated avatar videos is spreading online claiming a “migrant invasion” and that a “civil riot” is coming from “hard-working Australians. Rachel Jackson from AAP FactCheck investigates.
She looks every bit the city professional – sharp blazer, confident tone, polished backdrop.
But the woman issuing a rallying cry for this weekend’s anti-immigration marches and the end to Australia’s “invasion” hasn’t just stepped out of a CBD boardroom.
She’s a digital creation conjured by a few words fed into an artificial intelligence video generator.
An AAP FactCheck investigation reveals a wave of similar AI-generated avatar videos spreading online, pushing claims of a “migrant invasion” and election rigging, sometimes with violent overtones.
In one video, a gun-toting man stands before a cheering crowd, warning that a “civil riot” is coming from “hard-working Australians”.
A TikTok user has several AI-generated videos opposing immigration and tobacco and alcohol taxes
AAP FactCheck analysed content from two main accounts: LoveMyAu primarily features young, professional-looking female AI avatars across TikTok, X and Facebook; while SaltyHypsi showcases young Anglo-Australian men, often dressed in military gear on TikTok.
Many of the LoveMyAu videos promote anti-immigration March for Australia events, the latest of which was on Sunday.
“We must resist or we cease to exist,” a blue-suited woman says as she looks into the camera in one video.
“Invasions have never been welcomed,” declares another.
“Invaders do not get to walk in and take countries unopposed.”
Another video, which has attracted more than 70,000 views, shows a series of smartly dressed women strolling along a boardwalk, delivering lines reminiscent of a political broadcast.
“I believe the government has used mass immigration to manipulate election results,” one says.
The videos often appear like a slick political broadcast but are entirely created using AI
Other videos from the same account use similar avatars to accuse the government of throwing “our own people” to the streets to house migrants and urge Australians to “fight, fight, fight” or lose everything.
While the avatars are lifelike, they bear familiar AI hallmarks – unnaturally smooth skin, inconsistent lighting and shadows, while the lip-syncing is slightly off. Some clips still display the Veo watermark, identifying Google’s AI video generator.
The SaltyHypsi account includes avatars of soldiers, men addressing rallies and figures prompting viewers to sign petitions against digital ID and taxes on tobacco and alcohol.
One video with more than 60,000 views shows a man in body armour holding a gun before a crowd waving Australian flags.
“Our prime minister is refusing to take Australian citizens seriously,” he says.
“A civil riot is what is coming from hard-working Australians.”
In another, a man seemingly standing in the Australian bush declares: “Australia, the time for marching has ended and taking action might be our final chance to protect Australia and the future of our children”.
One AI-created avatar wears an army-green T-shirt while stating “the time for marching has ended”.
AAP FactCheck put a series of questions to both accounts but did not receive a response.
Such videos can be created in seconds by typing a prompt into one of the numerous text-to-video AI generators.
Dr Jessamy Perriam, a digital sociologist at ANU’s School of Cybernetics, says the appearance of the avatars is not accidental and they are likely designed to be an enhanced version of the people they would like to influence.
“They’re creating avatars to look like their aspirational acceptable Australian to others who don’t match that description,” Dr Perriam says.
AI also enables users to make their messages appear more socially acceptable by having them delivered by a “six o’clock TV news face” while preserving the anonymity of those behind it, she adds.
“Would there be as much engagement with these videos if it were just a video of the person creating it sitting in front of a webcam, saying the same words?”
A social media user created a range of women using AI to promote anti-immigration protests.
Bill Browne, a director at The Australia Institute who specialises in digital technology and political advertising, says the comments beneath many of the videos show some viewers are confused about whether the people depicted are genuine.
“It is disturbing how easy it is to make convincing depictions of something that never happened and someone who never existed,” he says.
“I don’t think politicians, regulators or the public fully appreciate yet the implications of artificial intelligence or large language models.”
University of Sydney academic Fiona Martin has researched AI and the use of deepfakes and says the use of such avatars is likely to expand rapidly in the coming years.
She sees the goal of this kind of content as an attempt to heighten emotional reactions, play to confirmation biases and encourage people to recruit others to the cause.
“The problem is, even if we regulate against AI political personas in Australia, you’re seeing hostile state actors running operations out of countries that will never regulate this activity,” she says.
The weapons manufacturer Saab was “directly linked” to a human rights violation when a missile it produced was found in an Indigenous heritage area, an investigation for the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development has found.
The four-year investigation could lead to more companies being held accountable for how their weapons are used by clients, according to human rights lawyers involved in the case.
A new study confirms that commonsense workplace protections from extreme heat — water, shade, breaks — help save workers from being injured on the job. The finding — something labor and climate advocates have long known and pushed for in public policy — comes just as the federal government shutdown may have suspended the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s lengthy rulemaking process to create the U.S.’s first-ever nationwide heat standard for workers.
Some experts now fear that the agency, which ordinarily takes about seven years on average to establish new rules, will face further delays.
In order to calculate the risk of injury on hot days, researchers from the public health schools at Harvard University and George Washington University utilized OSHA’s database for workplace injuries, pulling nearly 900,000 cases from 2023. They found that 28,000 injuries were attributable to heat, and that workers in all industry sectors, including those who mostly work indoors, were impacted. The study, published this week, also found that the risk for injury starts to increase when the heat index, a measure of how temperatures really feel to the human body, reaches 85 degrees Fahrenheit, and then becomes even more likely once the heat index passes 90.
“This study elegantly confirms what all of us have experienced,” said Charlotte Brody, vice president of health initiatives at the BlueGreen Alliance, a coalition of labor and environmental groups. “When it gets really hot, it’s hard to do hard work safely. And the hotter it gets, the more clumsy and fuzzy thinking we get.”
Much of the prior research on the impact of heat on workers has focused on illnesses caused by exposure to high temperatures — such at heat stroke, fatigue, nausea, dizziness, and vomiting. By examining the likelihood of workplace injuries on hot days, researchers are revealing other hidden costs of extreme heat — for both laborers and employers.
“It’s very clear that heat causes more than simply heat illness and unfortunately heat fatalities,” said David Michaels, one of the authors of the study and a professor at the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University. “But it also causes thousands of injuries every year. When you’re working in heat, you can much more easily make mistakes.” Michaels also served as the head of OSHA from 2009 to 2017.
“The numbers on this one are a little bit eye-opening,” said Juanita Constible, a senior advocate for environmental health at the Natural Resources Defense Council, who described this study as the first national look at the impact of heat on workplace injury. (Barrak Alahmad, lead author of the study and senior research scientist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said his team was not aware of any other nationwide study that covered the contiguous United States.)
A construction worker drinks water during record-breaking heat in the Boston area.
David L. Ryan / The Boston Globe via Getty Images
Crucially, the study also found that states that have enacted their own heat standards to protect workers had a lower risk of injury on hot days compared to states that lack such rules. Constible considered this “the most critical piece of the paper.” She added, “It’s the first big picture look that we have at how well standards are working to reduce these kinds of traumatic health problems.”
The idea that working on hot days may not just be uncomfortable, but also potentially dangerous, is likely not surprising to labor and climate advocates. It’s also probably unsurprising to anyone who has had to work on hot days.
“People know it intuitively when they’re out mowing their lawn for a few hours and they get really hot and miserable, right?” said Constible. “It impairs our judgment, makes our hands slippy, affects our posture.”
With time, the human body can become acclimated to hotter temperatures. But employers often use this to justify not providing basic necessities like water, rest breaks, and shade to workers, said Brody. “This study shows that hot weather creates more workplace injuries and that a commonsense heat rule matters,” she said.
OSHA is currently in the process of receiving final comments from parties that testified on a Biden-era proposal for a national heat rule earlier this year. But the federal government shutdown could potentially drag on or complicate this phase. “I think we can expect that this will lead to delays in promulgating an OSHA rule,” said Brody.
Constible, who testified at an OSHA hearing on the proposed heat rule in June, said that what the ultimate impact of the shutdown will be is unclear. For now, the online portal through which she and others can submit final comments to the agency remains active. Since the shutdown began last Wednesday, OSHA has not extended its deadline for comments, which is currently October 30.
But could a prolonged federal funding shortage change that? The online portal is, after all, just a website, that “like all the others, requires maintenance,” said Constible. Without that, “the question is: Will it continue to work?” She noted that there is an option to email comments to the agency. “If the deadline does not get extended and the website’s not working, then we’ll just start emailing. Or I’ll walk down to OSHA’s office.”
Grist’s emailed request to OSHA for comment returned an automatic message citing the government shutdown as a reason why the account is not being monitored.
Even if the current heat standard proposal continues to move through OSHA without a shutdown-related delay, Constible and Brody expressed concern it may ultimately be watered down — due to industry groups who say following standards is expensive and burdensome and President Donald Trump’s deregulatory agenda.
Michaels, however, argued that, “if the Trump administration recognizes the importance of protecting workers, they will issue a strong standard.”
Half of Tory members also want Kemi Badenoch to be replaced as Conservative leader. This live blog is closed
Mel Stride, the shadow chancellor, was doing an interview round for the Conservatives this morning, and Miatta Fahnbulleh, the faith and communities minister, was on the air on behalf of the government. They were both asked about the latest development in the flag phenomenon – the former footballer turned property developer Gary Neville saying that he took down a union flag flying at one of his building sites because he felt it was being used in a “negative fashion”.
Asked if Neville (a Labour supporter) had a point, Fahnbulleh told ITV’s Good Morning Britain:
I think he’s really right, that there are people who are trying to divide us at the moment …
I spent a lot of time going around our communities, talking to people. People are ground down. We’ve had a decade-and-a-half in which living standards haven’t budged and people have seen their communities held down. And you will get people trying to stoke division, trying to blame others, trying to stoke tension.
I think people that put up flags, the vast majority of people that do, do so for perfectly reasonable patriotic reasons. And I think reclaiming our flag as a flag of unity and decency and tolerance, which is the way most people see our flag, is a very positive thing.
So I’m afraid I really cannot agree with the comments that he’s made.
Indigenous groups in Mexico opposed to the planned brewery say families already have little access to water – and that their way of life is also under threat
On a summer evening in southern Mexico, a percussion group using water bottles as instruments leads a procession through Mérida, capital of Yucatán state. Children walking alongside elderly people are guided by members of Múuch’ Xíinbal, a Maya land rights organisation. The placards they carry declare: “Water is not for sale.” A heavy chant accompanies the march: “It’s not a drought – it’s plunder!”
At a rallying point in the city, protesters read from a manifesto and accuse the government of prioritising profit over water, health and land. They denounce a wave of mega-projects imposed without their consent, from industrial-scale pig farms to the controversial Maya Train tourist expansion. But they reserve their greatest anger for the Heineken brewery in Kanasín, near Mérida, which was announced in June.
Plant-based meat might be struggling right now, but the global vegan mayonnaise market is looking promising, according to a new report from Future Market Insights. The analysis projects the industry’s value could nearly double over the next decade, reaching $9.1 billion by 2035.
There are several key reasons behind this growth. More consumers are choosing plant-based foods for sustainable and ethical reasons, but health is also a major motivator.
Vegan mayonnaise is often seen as a healthier alternative, since it is lower in fat and cholesterol than traditional, egg-based versions. For example, one tablespoon of Hellmann’s Real Mayonnaise contains 8 percent of the recommended daily saturated fat intake, while its Plant Based Mayo Spread contains just 3 percent.
Vegenaise
As well as Hellmann’s, other brands offering popular egg-free mayonnaise options include Follow Your Heart, Eat Just, Chosen Foods, and Sir Kensington’s. For even more vegan mayo options, check out our guide here.
The report notes particularly strong demand in Japan, but sales are also rising across Europe, the UK, and the US. “The growth is further bolstered by supportive government initiatives and consumer advocacy promoting sustainable food production and animal welfare,” the firm notes. “Regulations encouraging plant-based food adoption and health guidelines for reduced fat and cholesterol intake are collectively driving innovation and expansion across the globe.”
A similar trend is emerging in the dairy alternatives market. According to the IMARC Group, the vegan yogurt market is expected to surpass $12.2 billion by 2033, while Grand View Research projects the plant-based milk market could reach more than $32.3 billion by 2030.
So, why is plant-based meat struggling?
By contrast, the plant-based meat sector is facing headwinds. Shares in Beyond Meat, one of the category’s leading brands, have fallen by 37 percent. Rising costs and consumer hesitancy around ultra-processed foods remain major obstacles.
“There is a market for fake meat, but consumers are broadly skeptical of the category as it is not seen as particularly natural and is viewed as being highly processed,” Neil Saunders, managing director at GlobalData, told The Daily Mail. “This means demand is sluggish and that, along with competition, has weighed down on Beyond Meat’s performance and valuation.”
Beyond Meat
Plant-based mayo, on the other hand, while also processed, carries a stronger health halo. It is also rarely the centerpiece of a meal, and is usually spread or mixed with other ingredients, likely making it an easier swap. Condiments also lack the deep cultural and emotional ties of meat, which may make them simpler to replace for many individuals.
Still, there is hope for plant-based meat. Brands are adapting to consumer concerns through innovation. Beyond Meat has rebranded as “Beyond,” while British brand This is launching more whole-food products made with mushrooms and tofu. Speaking of tofu, IMARC Group predicts the tofu category alone could surpass $4.4 billion by 2033.
“As plant-based meat technologies improve, there is no reason the category cannot grow in the future,” Jerry Thomas, the CEO of Decision Analyst, also told The Daily Mail. “The category still has long-term potential.”
This post was originally published on VegNews.com.
Scott Morrison, former PM and architect of Robodebt, got a large ‘secret handshake’ payout when sacked by Tourism Australia. After a 4-year battle the FOIs finally surface for Jommy Tee.
The political career of Scott Morrison was built on punching down at welfare recipients. Yet, in a bitter twist of irony, the architect of the pernicious Robodebt scheme was himself the beneficiary of a massive, secret overpayment when sacked as managing director of Tourism Australia in 2006.
Newly released documents, finally brought to light after a four-year Freedom of Information (FOI) battle, reveal that Scott Morrison was, according to the Remuneration Tribunal, overpaid by up to $212,000 in a “handshake” severance deal designed to facilitate his swift and quiet exit.
While Morrison later launched his infamous Robodebt “welfare cop” blitz a decade later – fronting the media straight-faced determined to crack down on rorters and those that had been allegedly overpaid – the highly inflated severance payment he himself received was never widely reported.
The FOI documents expose the hypocrisy at the heart of the matter: how the political class take care of their own while the innocent are fair game to be hunted, harassed and bullied. Morrison’s own windfall, paid out to ensure a “certainty and seamless” separation from the public service, was never pursued. No “welfare cop” was sent to his door.
Minister Fran Bailey initiates Scomo’s sacking
The move to sack Scott Morrison from his post as Managing Director of Tourism Australia (TA) began with a single, decisive phone call in the last days of July 2006. It followed the “Where the bloody hell are you” campaign. New documents detailing the crisis – specifically the minutes and papers of Board Meeting No. 18, which spanned three days – reveal the machinations around his highly paid exit.
The sequence of events was swift and brutal. According to the board minutes, then Tourism Minister, Fran Bailey, who had reportedly clashed repeatedly with Morrison during his tenure, rang TA Chair Tim Fischer to deliver the message: she and the government had officially “lost confidence” in Morrison.
In response, the board sought a political quick fix—a strategy that led directly to the non-compliant severance deal.
Fischer wasted no time. On the morning of Thursday, July 27, he contacted Morrison to relay the Minister’s message.
The documents reveal Fischer made “seven points in relation to the matter” to Morrison. What those seven points entailed are not recorded in the documents. The message, however, was clear: “as a consequence an amicable ‘agreed separation’ should be sought.”
Fischer informed Morrison that Deputy Chairman Tony Clark and others would meet with him the very next day, Friday, July 28, to begin discussions that would culminate in his rapid departure.
‘Secret Handshake’ deal finalised
Following the Minister’s wish to sack Morrison, the board papers confirm that the trio of Fisher, Clark and Morrison negotiated the over-inflated severance deal that saw Morrison overpaid by up to $212,000.
The lucrative “handshake” agreement required Board approval.
The proposal presented to the full board stated:
“Following extensive discussions between the Chairman, Deputy Chairman and Managing Director, Mr Scott Morrison, it was agreed that Mr Morrison would depart TA with effect 15 September 2006.”
The minutes then “invite the Board to fully endorse this and to consider and endorse the preparation of a Deed of Release (in accord with the ‘handshakes’ done)” with the following main component:
The Deed includes the provision in the broad of a 9.5 month contract separation payment and other standard exit arrangements.
The Deed recognises that the Board seeks certainty, and to the extent possible, seamlessness in arriving at these agreed separation arrangements.
The document trail confirms the speed of the operation, suggesting that by Monday, July 31, just days after the sacking was initiated, “a handshake had been done with Scott Morrison” and he had “commenced packing up.”
MWM has previously tried to access the Deed via FOI, but our requests were denied as TA does not hold an executed separation deed. The Information Commissioner cited TA’s failure to produce evidence of a mutual obligation of confidence, namely the relevant provisions of the executed separation agreement, in ordering TA to release this new slew of documents.
Board in breach in scramble for exemption, Rem Tribunal blindsided
Crucially, the documents confirm the board knew it was operating outside the rules.
The board resolved that the “handshake” severance settlement would require subsequent approval from the Remuneration Tribunal (Tribunal) via a special exemption.
The board minuted:
To gain compliance of the separation package, an exemption was sought from the Remuneration Tribunal to agreed separation terms.
The Board resolved that should the Remuneration Tribunal approve the exemption then the Chairman be given authority to execute the Deed, effective from 31 July 2006.
With the severance deal finalised through handshakes Fischer moved quickly to convince the Tribunal to grant an exemption from adhering to the official remuneration determinations.
The documents reveal that Fischer executed a gambit after the board meeting on the evening Tuesday, August 1, 2006, to secure the exemption.
At 6:30 PM, Fischer called Tribunal head John Conde to discuss the “agreed separation”. While the content of that conversation is unclear, what followed four hours later was an exemption.
At 10:48 PM, Fischer emailed Conde, delivering a prepared file note: “You can consider the exemption granted, but a Statement of Reasons will be issued… at a later date”.
Fischer used this exemption to push the deal through instantly. He confirmed he had already signed the “Deed of Trust and Release” and that Morrison would sign the same document at 9:30 AM the next morning, “ensuring certainty and separation forthwith”.
By Wednesday, August 2, Fischer emailed his fellow directors confirming the deed was signed by both parties, copying Minister Bailey’s chief of staff, Dan Tehan, into the message. The deal was done.
Tribunal fury: ‘Unacceptable Precedent’ set
However, from the documents, it is apparent the Tribunal was left incensed by TA’s stitch-up. Feeling railroaded into accepting the terms, the Tribunal initiated a meeting with Minister Bailey and Dan Tehan on August 7 to discuss the premature departure.
The very next day, August 8, Conde fired off a blistering letter to Fischer.
While the letter begrudgingly accepted the exemption, it immediately raised serious concerns, noting: “We note that Tourism Australia agreed a termination benefit inconsistent with that fixed by the Tribunal.”
The Remuneration Tribunal’s letter to Fisher didn’t just expose the overpayment to Scott Morrison,
it heavily criticised the Board’s actions.
The Tribunal’s head, John Conde, revealed the massive disparity in Morrison’s severance deal. Based on Fischer’s advice, Conde said the board-approved payment to Morrison was equivalent to one year’s total remuneration, a payout of up to $332,030.
The Tribunal pointing out that official determination should have been based on salary and the remaining term of the appointment. Following the rules, the payment “would have been less than $120,000″—meaning Morrison walked away with up to $212,000 more than he was entitled.
Conde immediately categorised the entire situation as “highly unsatisfactory.”
Tribunal slams Board’s actions
The Tribunal’s letter also exposed how the board secured the deal: by disregarding and ignoring guidelines.
As the board had already given Morrison a “Deed of Release,” meaning he had “left Office on the basis of the deed provided to him.” Fischer had earlier advised the Tribunal the Commonwealth faced “the risk of litigation and additional cost” if they attempted to amend the payment terms.
In short, the board’s actions forced the government’s hand to pay the over-inflated sum.
Conde didn’t mince words, delivering a scathing rebuke that effectively read the riot act to Fischer.
He declared the board’s commitments “set an unacceptable precedent for the federal public sector.”
Conde was particularly incensed by the board’s claim that it was “unaware of the termination provisions” for Principal Executive Offices (PEOs). The Tribunal reminded Fischer of the numerous times it had corresponded with the board, and Fischer’s numerous replies confirming that all terms were to be in accordance with the PEO Determination and that “no consent had been given… for any departure.”
“It will be readily apparent to you… that the Tribunal has considerable difficulty in understanding how these vital aspect of PEO employment arrangements could have been overlooked by your Board,” Conde wrote pointedly.
To conclude, Conde demanded Fischer show cause how the board was implementing its responsibilities, copying Minister Fran Bailey – who initiated Morrison’s sacking – into the letter.
Fischer’s eventual reply on August 23 admitted error but tried to shift the blame, citing a “misunderstanding” between Tourism Australia and Gilbert and Tobin which “encouraged the view, wrong in actuality, that the need for Certainty and Seamlessness could override”.
The documents highlight the board engaged in atrocious governance and maladministration by prioritising a quick, amicable exit for Morrison over due process and fiscal responsibility, a scandal of which the Minister was made fully aware.
Look at the packaging of any food or consumer item in the U.S., and there’s a good chance you’ll see a black-and-white decal: the iconic “chasing arrows” recycling symbol, along with the web address how2recycle.info.
As you might guess, the labels are meant to tell consumers how they can recycle the boxes, wrappers, and cans that they buy. They’re designed by an organization called How2Recycle, which sells its labels to hundreds of companies across the U.S.
It’s not clear, however, whether products featuring the How2Recycle labels are actually recyclable in practice. This problem is at the center of a new lawsuit.
On Wednesday, the city of Philadelphia sued two major companies that use the How2Recycle label and other recycling symbols on their plastic bags: SC Johnson, which owns Ziploc, and Bimbo Bakeries USA, the country’s largest commercial baking company and the owner of brands such as Oroweat and Sara Lee. According to the 47-page complaint, SC Johnson and Bimbo have engaged in a “coordinated campaign of deception” to convince consumers that their plastic bags are recyclable.
The companies’ practices “violate the law, deceive consumers, and contribute to environmental pollution and the disruption of recycling operations, costing the city thousands of dollars every year in remediation,” Philadelphia’s city solicitor, Renee Garcia, said in a statement.
Oroweat bread, a brand owned by Bimbo Bakeries USA, and Ziploc bags, owned by SC Johnson. Geri Lavrov / Getty Images; Kevin Carter / Getty Images
The complaint is part of a recent surge in state-, city-, and county-level litigation related to plastics recycling claims. Right now there are pending lawsuits from Baltimore; California; Connecticut; L.A. County; and New York state. A lawsuit from Minnesota against Walmart and the manufacturer of Hefty trash bags was settled last year.
But Philadelphia’s suit is the first to name-check How2Recycle, whose labels often instruct consumers to deposit used plastic bags at “store drop-off” locations, like at Walmart and Target stores. According to the complaint, most or all Ziploc and Bimbo products sold in Philadelphia featured these labels as of 2024, sometimes in addition to other recycling indicators and instructions.
The city says these labels mislead consumers into thinking they can buy plastic bags without creating waste, as long as they try to recycle them. This allegedly contravenes a consumer protection ordinance that Philadelphia enacted in 2024, which empowers the city to investigate deceptive business practices without waiting for the Pennsylvania attorney general or district attorney to do so.
What’s the connection between plastics and climate change?
Plastics are made from fossil fuels and cause greenhouse gas emissions at every stage of their lifespan, including during the extraction of oil and gas, during processing at petrochemical refineries, and upon disposal — especially if they’re incinerated. If the plastics industry were a country, it would have the world’s fourth-largest climate footprint, based on data published last year by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
Research suggests that plastics are responsible for about 4 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. But this is likely an underestimate due to significant data gaps: Most countries lack greenhouse gas information on their plastics use and disposal, and the data that is available tends to focus on plastic production and specific disposal methods.
Scientists are beginning to explore other ways plastics may contribute to climate change. Research suggests that plastics release greenhouse gases when exposed to UV radiation, which means there could be a large, underappreciated amount of climate pollution emanating from existing plastic products and litter. Marine microplastics may also be inhibiting the ocean’s ability to store carbon. And plastic particles in the air and on the Earth’s surface could be trapping heat or reflecting it — more research is needed.
Holly Kaufman, a senior fellow at the nonprofit World Resources Institute, said it’s obvious that plastics are using up more than their fair share of the carbon budget, the amount of carbon dioxide the world can emit without surpassing 1.5 or 2 degrees Celsius (2.7 or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming. Plastics have “a major climate impact that has just not been incorporated anywhere,” she said — including the U.N.’s plastics treaty.
In the context of plastics recycling lawsuits, “it’s the first time a city passed a law to give themselves the power to protect their citizens, protect their environment, from false claims,” said Jan Dell, who founded the nonprofit The Last Beach Cleanup and has launched many initiatives against misleading recycling labels. “They passed a law and now they’re enforcing the law.”
Philadelphia’s lawsuit cites research showing that most Americans believe the chasing arrows label used in any context means that a product is recyclable, and that recyclable products can be placed in their curbside recycling bins. But this is not the case. Philadelphia’s curbside recycling program, like most cities’, does not accept plastic bags because it is not economically practical to separate them and process them using special machinery.
According to a Department of Energy study published in 2022, only 2 percent of the U.S.’s low-density polyethylene, or LDPE — the type of filmy plastic used in bags — was recycled in 2019. The rate may be even lower for SC Johnson and Bimbo’s products: At an industry conference in 2018, an executive from SC Johnson said that only 0.2 percent of Ziploc bags are ever successfully turned into something new. There isn’t an end market for recycled plastic film because “it is perceived as inefficient and unprofitable,” the executive said.
Instead, plastic film — a category that includes bags as well as other thin plastic wrappers — becomes a contaminant in recycling equipment. It can jam machinery multiple times per day, causing facility-wide shutdowns so that workers can cut the film out using machetes. Philadelphia says this problem has increased waste and operating costs for its recycling plants.
The store drop-off labels provided by How2Recycle do not circumvent the shortcomings of curbside recycling, according to Philadelphia’s complaint. It says that drop-off boxes are “masquerading as recycling collection systems” but “actually function as trash cans in disguise.”
The complaint cites a 2023 investigation in which ABC News used tracking devices to follow bundles of plastic deposited in store drop-off bins across the U.S. The investigation found that only 4 of 46 trackers ended up at U.S. facilities that recycle plastic bags. Most of the rest went to landfills, incinerators, or transfer stations that don’t recycle plastic bags or send them to facilities that do. One of the trackers was dropped off at a Target location in Philadelphia. It went to a waste-management transfer station and was likely mixed with other trash to be burned or landfilled. Plastic in landfills breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces that leach chemicals and contaminate the environment.
Other investigations from Bloomberg Green, Environment America, U.S. Public Interest Research Group, and The Last Beach Cleanup have shown similar results. In 2023, the CEO of a company that had compiled a directory of plastic film drop-off locations abruptly took it offline, citing a lack of “real commitment” from the plastics industry. “There’s more of an illusion of stuff getting recycled than there actually is,” she told ABC News. “I just couldn’t be a part of it anymore.” (Ziploc packaging continued to direct people to this “effectively abandoned domain,” according to the Philadelphia complaint.)
Peter Blair, policy and advocacy director for the zero-waste nonprofit Just Zero, said Philadelphia’s lawsuit may be stronger than previous ones brought at the state or local level because it’s backed by the city’s consumer protection ordinance, and not just a set of green marketing guidelines from the Federal Trade Commission, or FTC. Claims made on the basis of the FTC guidelines usually require evidence of financial harm to consumers at the point of purchase — in other words, that they bought one product over another one explicitly because of its recycling labels. Philadelphia’s ordinance is broader, he said, and doesn’t rely on demonstrating that consumer connection.
Blair added that the Philadelphia lawsuit is the most direct challenge to the How2Recycle store drop-off label that he’s seen. “Let’s be clear,” he told Grist: “The How2Recycle label’s primary purpose is not to help consumers navigate recycling, but to protect the illusion that plastic recycling works.”
How2Recycle did not respond to Grist’s request for comment. In a 2020 report, the organization said that store drop-off only had “limited” promise to deal with the waste produced by plastic film. It announced in July that it would soon roll out new designs for its store drop-off labels featuring a take-back receptacle instead of the chasing arrows, but the designs still include the web address how2recycle.info.
The current version of How2Recycle’s store drop-off label, shown on the side of a box of Nature Valley granola bars. Courtesy of Jan Dell
SC Johnson also did not respond to a request for comment. Bimbo said it had not yet been served the complaint but that the company is “committed to zero-waste across our operations, including consumer packaging, and to being a strong partner in every community we serve.”
Shortly before Philadelphia’s complaint was filed, Bimbo terminated a mail-in recycling program with a partner organization called TerraCycle, which was also named in the suit. TerraCycle said the lawsuit inaccurately described its program and that it “has always guaranteed that we recycle all the accepted waste sent to us.” The organization said its label, a stylized infinity sign, “was consciously designed to avoid confusion with the triangle recycling logo.”
Philadelphia’s lawsuit cites numerous other recycling claims made by SC Johnson and Bimbo, including web pages claiming that Ziploc bags are recyclable at “18,000-plus stores around the United States” and therefore “don’t need to end up in landfills,” and that recycling via a mail-in program would make “all” of Bimbo’s packaging “sustainable by 2025.”
The city is requesting an injunction ordering Bimbo and SC Johnson to stop marketing their plastic film as recyclable, as well as civil penalties and other payments for harms that may have been caused by the companies’ recyclability claims. This could include, for example, cost increases to the municipal recycling program linked to contamination with plastic film.
Dell said other government bodies should follow Philadelphia’s lead. She’s settled two plastics recycling-related lawsuits — one with TerraCycle and eight major consumer product brands, and another with a supermarket — but told Grist that “private litigation is hard” and “should not be relied upon to keep companies honest.”
The lawsuit will “hopefully motivate other cities to go, ‘We should do that too because it’s hurting our recycling systems,’” she added.
Imagine, for a moment, it’s a sweltering July afternoon. You hear an unassuming knock on the door. Maybe you check your Ring camera to see a young man in a polo shirt, with a lanyard swinging. You open the door, and he launches into a pitch before you can even register the logo on his badge. “Hi, my name is John, and I’m working on the statewide clean energy initiative. Have you received a notice from your energy company about rate increases in the coming years?”
It may not be immediately apparent, but he’s trying to convince you to buy solar panels.
Summer is peak solar sales season, and crews canvass neighborhoods nationwide, generally in two-person teams. These door-knockers are there to set up an appointment with the “closer” — often on the same day — whose aim is to sell the homeowner a solar system.
Door-to-door solar sales are a widely accepted form of lead generation in the industry, despite being largely unregulated. While trade groups like the Solar Energy Industries Association do recommend best practices, both for the well-being of consumers and the overall health of the industry, high-pressure sales tactics remain pervasive. In sunnier states, such as California, Texas, and Florida, solar salespeople are often considered a nuisance. They frequently ignore “no soliciting” signs — claiming that they aren’t selling anything, simply setting up appointments — and their colleagues come along behind them pushing for quick sales or high commissions.
Just as the solar market differs from state to state, depending on utilities and the companies selling the hardware, the pitches vary too, tailored to each community and the pain points homeowners may experience. Targeted opening lines might reference utility companies raising prices or how much homeowners could receive from a federal tax incentive.
And now, with the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill tax and spending package that President Donald Trump signed into law in July, federal incentives are changing. Former president Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act offered a 30 percent federal tax credit on solar installations through 2034 — giving homeowners a decade to consider whether rooftop panels might be right for them. “That has been amended,” David Gahl, the executive director of the Solar and Storage Industries Institute, explained. “The credits are now only available to homeowners through the end of the calendar year.”
Under the new law, homeowners must have incurred qualifying expenses, such as payments for solar panels, battery storage, installation labor, or permitting fees, by the end of 2025. The shortened time frame creates urgency — and that gives door-to-door reps another leverage point to pressure homeowners to pursue solar faster than they may have originally planned.
Before the spending package was even signed into law, it was already shaping how solar gets sold. At the end of June, I attended a door-to-door solar sales training with a company called Elevate Solar in Kansas City, Kansas. Trainers showed how the loss of tax incentives could be worked into sales pitches.
After pulling into a small parking lot behind a Domino’s Pizza, we climbed a dark set of stairs to a door that led us into an office newly furnished with folding chairs and tables. I was shadowing a team of three experienced door-knockers paired with a closer who primarily works in California but had come to Kansas City to test the market.
“You can expect softer doors here,” said Nick Sinclair, vice president of sales operations for Elevate Solar. He meant that residents here haven’t been knocked as aggressively, making them not only friendlier, but more likely to buy.
After paperwork was signed, Sinclair and other representatives walked us through their sales strategies. “Pain equals a compelling pitch,” he said. “Even just the pain of that fear of the unknown.”
“Ask them if they’ve heard of the Big Beautiful Bill,” another rep added. “Most people have. Then tie in that they could lose federal tax incentives on solar.”
Sinclair said referencing current events is standard practice in his office. “That way the customer can connect with the idea,” he told me later in a phone interview. “I’ve been doing this for 12 years, and I’ve been at companies where there’s little to no training at all. I think it is more powerful to have well-informed reps that can speak to what homeowners are concerned about.”
Rising electricity prices make another effective selling point. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the nationwide average residential electricity price rose 6.5 percent between May 2024 and May 2025, climbing from 16.4 cents to 17.5 cents per kilowatt-hour. Some states saw far steeper increases, including Maine (36.3 percent), Connecticut (18.4 percent), and Utah (15.2 percent).
“So you’ve got this push and pull,” Gahl, from the Solar and Storage Industries Institute, said. “On one hand, federal policy changes are disincentivizing solar, but at the same time, people’s electricity bills are going up significantly. That trend is only going to continue, and it’s going to make on-site solar more attractive.”
For consumers, this creates both urgency and confusion, and the people tasked with helping them navigate this complicated landscape are often sales representatives. Some may take advantage of this fact to achieve their goal of making a sale — for instance, they may lead homeowners to believe that they’re signing up for a government program or something specifically sanctioned by their utility company.
Sellers also commonly overstate the amount of money that people might save, which depends on how much power the homeowner uses, whether they qualify for any tax incentives, and if their utility offers an energy buy-back program.
Let’s say you decided to schedule an appointment through John, the eager young salesman who offered you a pitch about a “statewide clean energy initiative.” A few hours later, the closing rep shows up at your door, walking you through the installation process. You sign a few papers. It’s a done deal.
But once your system is installed, you get an energy bill, and not only do you owe nearly the same amount as before, but you’re paying a monthly payment on solar panels as well because your system was never connected to the grid correctly. Essentially, solar doubled your monthly utilities when the sales team promised to eliminate them. So, you try to call John or the closing rep, only to be sent to voicemail. You try again the next day and realize they’ve blocked your number.
Alex W., a solar sales representative with over five years of experience in the industry who asked to be identified by last initial only for fear of reprisals, said actions like this are not uncommon.
“Generally, if the company gives you a pitch, you repeat that pitch. It’s a numbers game. So, the more doors you hit, the more money you make,” Alex said. In other words, the sales representatives, who are often paid only on commission, are incentivized to keep making more sales rather than support their clients once they’ve signed for purchase.
Read more about how to avoid predatory sales tactics
But Alex, who believes that a more honest solar sales industry is possible, argues that salespeople shouldn’t just memorize a pitch. “I think reps need to do their own research and not just follow what their boss is telling them, because it is constantly evolving,” Alex explained. “Selling in 2018 is not the same as selling now. Selling last year is different from selling this year. The buy-back rates change every single year. Eligibility for federal tax incentives has changed. Everything is changing all the time, and the reps need to know about all those changes.”
For homeowners, solar can be an incredible tool for lowering energy costs and contributing to a cleaner energy future, but the process requires careful attention. And that may include a hearty amount of skepticism about claims that door-to-door salespeople make. “That’s what sucks,” Alex said, “because you’ll have some reps who sit in front of you and explain everything in detail, answer all your questions, but then you have other reps who are, I’m sorry to say it, liars. So it leaves the homeowners asking, ‘Well, who do we believe?’”
Sinclair echoed the sentiment. “There’s good companies and bad companies, good reps and bad reps,” he said. “I think the good companies do want regulation to come into the industry.”
He added that being on the ground has some undeniable advantages. “We are there to create interest,” Sinclair said. “The reason we go door-to-door is simply the cheapest cost of customer acquisition. You don’t know if someone is a good candidate [for solar] because of trees, roof quality, or the position of their home until you see it.” While drumming up that interest, salespeople might emphasize pain points, as Sinclair described in the training in June. But he also noted that his company takes steps to ensure customers are not misled. “If reps misrepresent that tax credit or other programs, we do the quality control when scrubbing the deal with the closer. If they’re out there saying that they’re going to get a check in the mail no matter what, that’s irresponsible and it’s bad for business.”
The consequences of a bad sale extend beyond one household or even one company, giving solar energy itself a bad name. “It just screws the industry, because if you have a bad rep sell [to] Sally, then suddenly Sally is telling the entire neighborhood and all of her friends, so they’re not getting solar,” Alex said.
Several factors may influence a person’s decision to install solar panels on their home. Shifting federal incentives are only half of it; there are also various state and local regulatory decisions that impact the economics of a solar project, like how long it takes a home solar installation to get connected to the utility grid. Then there’s the system sizing for a person’s home, and the choice between buying the panels outright through a loan, leasing them from a company, or other payment structures.
With all these moving pieces, the homeowner who takes the time to ask the right questions, do their own research, and verify the credibility of their representative is far more likely to see solar’s benefits without costly surprises. Because in the end, no matter how well-meaning John the sales rep may seem at your door, in such a confusing and unregulated solar market, you need more information before you know if you can take his word for it.
When a Senator, John “Wacka” Williams, agitated strongly for the 2017 Banking Royal Commission. He is now an advisor to Commbank CEO Matt Comyn. Is there more to the story, Kim Wingerei asks?
The revelation that John Williams is an advisor to CommBank chief Matt Comyn comes at an interesting time. The National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) is looking into ASIC’s handling of a case directly linked to Comyn’s role in orchestrating a settlement to the former partner of another bank agitator, Geoff Shannon.
“It feels like a steamy thriller novel with endless twists,” Shannon told MWM. “There is the affair between a bank victim’s advocate’s girlfriend and a top National Australia Bank (NAB) executive, complete with pillow-talk emails. Later, that same woman, Natasha Keys, spilled 16,000 documents to ASIC to torpedo her ex-boyfriend’s career—right after scoring a secret $300,000+ payout from rival bank CBA.”
Shannon is the rambunctious founder of Unhappy Banking, who rallied hundreds of CBA-Bankwest victims against predatory lending, and who walked free in November 2023 after a Queensland Magistrates Court slammed the door on ASIC’s case. Charged under section 206A of the Corporations Act for allegedly pulling strings at Business and Personal Solutions Pty Ltd (BAPS) while bankrupt, Shannon was acquitted when Magistrate M Bamberry ruled the prosecution couldn’t prove he intentionally or recklessly meddled in the company’s core decisions.
The court dissected the tangled ties between Unhappy Banking (a high-profile advocacy outfit) and BAPS (a fee-charging consultancy), siding with witnesses like original BAPS director Robert Fitzalan, who swore Shannon was just a consultant, not a shadow boss.
During the trial, a web of infidelity, fat-cat settlements, and regulatory blind spots was exposed. And now, nearly two years on, Shannon’s fight is with the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC), asked to dig into claims of political backroom deals that Shannon suggests ignited the whole mess.
Leaked emails and late-night confessions
It started innocently enough in 2014, or so it seemed. Keys, then Shannon’s partner and BAPS director, was juggling client disputes with the big four banks. But court transcripts later revealed an affair with Simon Graystone, NAB’s director of corporate banking. While championing victims against the very institutions bleeding them dry, Keys was whispering secrets in the sheets.
In an email read in court, Keys wrote to Graystone, tipping him off about Shannon’s Unhappy Banking’s media blitz on a vulnerable NAB client, a disabled woman being forcefully evicted by NAB from her farm. The plan? Leak the story to Channel Nine’s A Current Affair to force a settlement.
In court, Shannon’s defence barrister, Saul Holt KC, grilled Keys until she invoked privilege against self-incrimination over 30 times. Her credibility shredded, the Emails showed her plotting a rival venture behind Shannon’s back, contradicting her affidavit claiming she quit BAPS because banks blackballed him.
As it turned out, Keys had her own personal battle with CBA, and she had met with CBA CEO Matt Comyn in 2018, negotiating a settlement involving her mortgage of $272,000 vanishing in addition to $309,000 “compensation for loss of equity and personal possessions.”
Why the CEO of Australia’s largest bank, with $1.35 trillion in assets and over 50,000 staff, got personally involved in Keys’ case, remains a mystery. Immediately after her settlement, Keys turned to Journalist Ben Butler to publish stories about Shannon and handed ASIC her document dump and volunteers as a star witness in the case ASIC lost.
Under Holt’s crossfire, ASIC investigator Nathan Miller squirmed, admitting he took Keys’ trove “at face value” without chasing Shannon’s exculpatory evidence. No verification of her affair, no probe into her CBA windfall—just a “one-eyed” rush to trial. The magistrate ordered ASIC to foot the bill for the defence to comb through the undisclosed 16,000 files, a humiliating own-goal.
How did it all start?
Geoff Shannon tells MWM that he believes his troubles started many years earlier. In 2013, he learnt of a hush-hush luncheon between John “Wacka” Williams, then a Nationals senator crusading against bank greed, and then CBA General Counsel, David Cohen.
Williams had his own history with CBA, losing his farm after being lured into the infamous foreign currency loan schemes that the CBA was spruiking in the mid-eighties (as documented in Adele Ferguson’s book “Banking Bad”). When he was elected to the Senate in 2008, he became an outspoken critic of bank behaviour and was one of the chief agitators for the Banking Royal Commission. He retired from the Senate in 2019.
Shannon claims that Cohen and Williams inked a confidential settlement that flipped his script. Suddenly, Williams went soft on CBA scrutiny. Shannon also alludes to the secrecy around the BankWest share deal. He did have a copy, and Williams wanted to see it, but Shannon refused. Williams later strong-armed it via Shannon’s media manager, Ross Waraker.
When Shannon confronted Williams about it, threats flew: “Friends in high places would bury him”.
Enter the NACC
In September 2023, Shannon submitted a case to the NACC, where he alleged that ASIC colluded against him and that Williams wielded his influence with ASIC to go after him. It includes a trove of documents, including a lawyer warning him not to spill to then PM Tony Abbott about Williams’ “secret deal.”
After first dismissing the case, the NACC has reopened another preliminary investigation after Shannon provided it with more documents. Shannon is hoping that this may ultimately validate his belief that his ASIC hellfire stemmed from his knowing too much.
From the earlier ASIC slapdown in 2015 (no disqualification) to this courtroom coup, Shannon has weathered the storm. But as NACC pokes the bear, he declares, “My campaign isn’t over. Political strings pulled my ASIC troubles from the start.”
“And what of this alliance between CBA’s Comyn and Williams? A deeper quid pro quo, or mere coincidence?”
With banks still devouring the vulnerable and regulators playing favourites – why chase a small fry when casino kings walk free?
Shannon’s saga spotlights the rot. Will justice finally bite back? Stay tuned, this tangled tale of sex, secrets, and settlements is far from its final chapter.
MWM put questions to both CBA, who merely referred to media reports, and to John Williams, who replied,
“I first met Matt when he became CEO. He made the effort to come to Inverell to meet with me. Just prior to my valedictory speech, February 13th 2019, Andrew Hall, who was PA for Matt, told me about the Advisory Committee Matt had formed. It is a committee of around 8 people from various industries, and asked if I would be part of the committee. I agreed to join it as it gave me a direct link with CBA once out of politics. I see my job on the Advisory Committee is to inform Matt on regional issues.
Yes we do get paid for each of the three meetings a year but you wouldn’t rely on the payments to keep you alive.”
Our two-part series starts September 27th, exposing the inside story of the failed crypto currency exchange & the contentious bankruptcy that followed.
A financial mismanagement scandal has hit the sport of Ice Hockey in Australia, and its President has stepped down in disgrace. Sandi Logan with the story.
Ice Hockey is not a major sport in Australia, or anywhere else in the southern hemisphere. In Northern and Eastern Europe, Russia and North America, however, it has a huge following as a professional (and Olympic) sport. But now the game of heavy padding, squared off sticks, and flat pucks is making headlines for all the wrong reasons.
In what has come as no surprise to many in Australia’s small and disparate (some say desperate) ice hockey community, president, Dr Ryan O’Handley, has stepped down in disgrace, admitting to understating financial losses at Ice Hockey Australia (IHA).
Indications are his board’s underreporting runs into at least six figures – maybe much more.
“Recognising the inconsistencies from the past reporting period, Dr O’Handley will step down as President and Chair of the Board,” newly appointed president Tim Kitching said in a 9 September statement posted to IHA’s website. “Last financial year’s reported losses are expected to be larger than initially stated.”
Kitching said there were no indications yet of potential fraud or misappropriation, but he has ordered “a thorough investigation and review” into the organisation’s finances with a two-week deadline.
He said until such time as the evidence suggests anything more than the re-issuing of an accurate financial statement, he wouldn’t speculate on any matters being referred to the Australian Securities and Investment Commission and/or the Victorian Police Fraud Squad.
Skating on thin ice
In February 2022, the former treasurer of the 5000-member strong IHA, Adrian Miller was was dumped from the board in a coup.
Miller had stood up to then-Melbourne fraudster Grove Bennett, who O’Handley backed into the role as president at the same time. Canadian creditors were chasing the Australian fugitive for over $1M in unpaid debts as he made his run for the presidency of the IHA board.
“When I was deposed, IHA’s members were left with $1.9m in cash reserves, and that’s now down to $328,000 if the accounts submitted are to be believed – which IHA has admitted they cannot be,” says Miller.
Ice hockey has been played in Australia since 1906, and is one of the International Ice Hockey Federation’s oldest members. It has attracted a cohort of questionable characters to staff its board.
IHA operates under the Corporations Act 2001 as a company limited by guarantee.
Members’ annual dues are essentially its sole income. The only time in recent years the IHA has secured taxpayer (Commonwealth) funding was when the Department of Social Services allocated $342,000 in 2022 for the sport’s fledgling para (or sled) hockey program. Both the men’s and women’s para teams travel overseas, competing in events where they are regularly humiliated by far stronger and more experienced opposition. Scores of 40-0 are not uncommon.
No financial records have ever been published on IHA’s website or released to its membership about this program. “If I were still on the IHA board,” says Miller, “I’d be shoring up my own case against an accusation of impropriety.”
Poor reporting and governance
A respected Victorian businessman (who asked to remain nameless) with a strong community sports background said: “I’m amazed at the continual incompetence being overlooked or accepted by the membership-paying people. Unjustifiable spending seems to go unnoticed or not challenged.”
Kitching, a former NSW police officer and detective, who transitioned into roles in risk management, governance and more recently as an Executive Coach, was appointed to the IHA board in July; weeks later, he has been catapulted into the president’s chair.
“Dr O’Handley stepped down at a Board meeting on September 5,” Kitching told me. “I am not privy to any conversation/s prior to July with the ex-president or treasurer, and would be cautious to speculate as such.”
Those familiar with that 5 September meeting describe it as tense and at times confrontational. O’Handley was queried about a lack of supporting evidence for IHA expenditure. He allegedly said it was not necessary to share that with the eight member associations, let alone the broader membership. Several board members stood up to O’Handley, demanding transparency and accountability, at which point O’Handley threw in the towel.
Kitching told MWM,
In short, this is an issue of poor governance, poor communication and poor financial control.
“I need time to speak with all my fellow directors to establish the best way forward. We cannot simply operate on a break-even basis year in and year out.”
“Ice Hockey Australia is committed to sharing the updated financial position for FY25 with our key stakeholders, and if the regulation requires, an amended statement to ASIC or any other body. The loss relates to growing costs and over-investment with national teams and leagues, a reduction in key income streams, and complications with the timing of funding.”
“Ice Hockey Australia does not believe there’s been any impropriety, and are committed to a full, transparent, and thorough review as we seek to establish the best governance standards in sport. We will be transparent with our member associations regarding the outcome.”
Another former president of Ice Hockey Australia and veteran company director, Sydney-based Miranda Ransome, says, “I don’t think member associations are all that engaged, so they probably have no idea about the business of IHA and what the pertinent issues may be.
“In most instances, they are struggling to do their jobs at a state level. Clearly, it was a disengaged board that didn’t understand its fiduciary duties,” she said.
Herein lies the great challenge for IHA: its constitution assigns control to its eight member associations, a small pool of electors easy to control and corral into a voting bloc. There has long been a call to adopt an election model in which 5,000 members vote directly for board members to manage and operate IHA.
Three days after the Mountain Fire tore through the hillsides of Camarillo in Southern California last November, Craig Crosby was at home assessing the damage when he spotted two men canvassing the neighborhood. Crosby’s house was still standing, but the blaze had burned down the northwest corner of the structure and his avocado orchard. Every surface was covered in ash and soot. The windows had melted, the doors were scorched, and everything reeked of smoke.
The men eventually made it to his doorstep and introduced themselves as franchise employees of the national restoration company Servpro. They told him they could help with the cleanup, and that they worked with all major insurance firms, including AAA Insurance, where he held a policy.
Crosby, who is a consumer advocate and founder of The Counterfeit Report, was wary. He told them he was not ready to authorize repairs, but that they could assess the damage. When they handed him a one-page access form, he scrawled a few amendments: his insurance adjuster’s information and a line clarifying that he only wanted “evaluation, recommendation, documentation, and inspection.”
“I like to memorialize exactly what I say,” Crosby later recalled. “And it struck me a little unusual that they didn’t have a problem with me changing a corporate form.”
An authorization form signed by Craig Crosby shows he clarified that he only wanted “evaluation, recommendation, documentation, and inspection.”
Craig Crosby / Grist
Over the next 10 days, the company sent more than a dozen workers to his house. They moved furniture, wiped the walls, and dusted surfaces. Along the way, they copied a AAA Insurance representative on emails, leading Crosby to believe that his policy would cover the work. But Crosby started to notice they were cleaning surfaces that probably needed to be ripped out and tossed. Then they began causing new problems. As they tore out insulation in the attic, they damaged HVAC pipes and vents. (An HVAC technician would later deem the system inoperable due to the damage.) They also dinged the garage door, stained carpeting, and broke an attic access door.
When Crosby called his insurance adjuster to complain about the company’s shoddy workmanship and excessive billing, he was shocked to learn that AAA had never approved the work. In fact, they told him One Silver Serve, LLC, the franchise that had approached Crosby, was on their internal blacklist. When he told the cleaning company it would cost roughly $16,000 to replace the HVAC system, they initially offered in writing to cover the cost if he signed a liability waiver. Once he did, the company reversed course. Instead of paying, its lawyer told him he owed the company more than $62,000 for their services.
Then, on Valentine’s Day, the company escalated it further. Its lawyer filed a mechanic’s lien — a legal claim against a property for unpaid work — on Crosby’s home. He couldn’t believe it. He’d never paid a credit card bill late, let alone had a lien on his property. “I pay all my bills a month in advance,” he said. “That’s how conscious I am not to jeopardize my reputation and standing.”
A sign in Altadena, California warns people whose homes burned in the Eaton Fire in January of being approached by unlicensed contractors. David McNew/Getty Images
Based in Encino, California, One Silver Serve LLC is one of Servpro’s roughly 2,300 independently owned franchises. It benefits from Servpro’s national reputation, but operates with little direct oversight from the parent company. The quality of work, billing practices, and ethical standards are entirely left to the local franchise.
About a dozen of Crosby’s neighbors had similar experiences with One Silver Serve following the Mountain Fire, according to county records and court filings. Each was approached by workers at their doorstep in the days after the fire, told insurance would cover costs, signed an authorization form, and later received exorbitant bills for cleaning. Some, like Robert Perez, a funeral director down the street, received notice of a mechanic’s lien for roughly $58,000. When Crosby, Perez, and others didn’t cough up the money, One Silver Serve sued them in the Ventura County Superior Court. Crosby’s insurance adjuster eventually declared the home a total loss from the fire — a determination that restorationprofessionalstypically identify during their initial assessment, before cleaning commenced. Crosby has since filed counterclaims for fraud, breach of contract, property damage, and elder abuse.
An attorney for One Silver Serve declined to comment. Kim Brooks, director of communications for Servpro, said the company is aware of the lawsuit against Crosby and does not comment on pending litigation.
Craig Crosby / Grist
More than a third of people impacted by a disaster report experiencing fraud, according to a survey commissioned by the American Institute of CPAs, a national organization of accountants. About 8 percent said they experienced contractor fraud, and another 10 percent reported vendor fraud, which involves improper payments to real or fictitious businesses. Post-disaster scams come in many forms. In some cases, contractors ask for money up front and then disappear. In others, they may tear down walls damaged by floodwaters or fires, collect a portion of their fees, and never return to rebuild the home. But in the case of more sophisticated actors, they use insurance companies and the legal system to put homeowners in a bind.
“Any component that involves people who have been impacted and are vulnerable, people will try to find a way to capitalize,” said Niambi Tillman, a regional director with the nonprofit National Insurance Crime Bureau. “You’ll see people price gouging or inflated costs with excessive billing, trying to convince people to make decisions very quickly and cough up money on the front end, and then not delivering the services.”
As hurricanes, wildfires, and flooding become more frequent and severe, the disaster economy has ballooned — and with it, opportunities to take advantage of people in crisis. Disaster survivors who have already lost homes, and in some cases, loved ones, are left further traumatized and financially strained.
The National Insurance Crime Bureau estimates that upward of 10 percent of post-disaster spending is lost to scams every year. With nearly $183 billion in infrastructure losses from weather-related disasters in 2024, contractor fraud has become a lucrative business. And its consequences ripple throughout the economy. The rising cost of recovery, fueled in part by fraudulent activity, then causes insurance premiums to rise and insurers to reduce coverage or leave a region altogether. According to the National Insurance Crime Bureau, fraud, particularly as perpetrated by contractors and other third parties, is “a threat to the stability of the insurance market.” USI Insurance Services, one of the largest insurance brokerage and consulting firms in the country, estimates that fraud is responsible for $900 more in premiums per policyholder.
One of Crosby’s neighbors, who asked for her name to be withheld, was not home when the Mountain Fire ripped through her neighborhood and burned part of her house. One Silver Serve charged more than $100,000 to clean the property — an amount she never agreed to — and put a mechanic’s lien on her house when she didn’t pay. Since the fire, she’s rented an apartment in the nearby city of Oxnard and has been coordinating repairs with a licensed contractor. For now, she’s focused on rebuilding and plans to deal with the lien afterward.
“In my whole 82-year-old life, I have never come across such absolute crooks,” she said. “Here you are, a devastating thing that your house … has burned, and they come and do this. It’s horrible. Right now, I don’t know how to get the lien off of my house.”
In the aftermath of wildfires, hurricanes, and flooding, state attorneys general, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and local law enforcement officials have taken to warning homeowners to be on the lookout for scammers. Servpro franchises aren’t the only offenders in post-disaster contractor fraud. But Servpro’s national reputation and professional branding lend an air of credibility to franchisees’ operations, making them harder to scrutinize.
Servpro was founded in 1967 as a small painting operation in Sacramento, California. Within two years, the company launched as a franchise cleaning business and began expanding its operations. By 2000, it had 1,000 franchises, and by the end of the decade, it made more than a billion dollars in revenue. Today, the company has a network of over 2,300 franchises and is a multibillion-dollar organization that can serve 97 percent of the country’s ZIP codes within two hours.
A green Servpro of Belmont/San Carlos service van is parked in San Francisco, California. Servpro franchises can serve 97 percent of zip codes within two hours.
Smith Collection / Gado / Getty Images
Once franchisees are approved, they receive classroom and hands-on training at the company’s headquarters in Gallatin, Tennessee. The company requires that franchisees use Servpro-branded equipment and professional cleaning products, paint any service vehicles with the company’s green logo and decals, and wear its black and green uniforms. “Servpro has a proprietary brand identity guide that establishes and maintains a consistent professional customer-facing image for brand awareness and professionalism,” the company’s website notes.
But it’s unclear if Servpro has processes in place to hold franchise owners accountable for questionable practices. Across the country, there are hundreds ofcomplaints with the Better Business Bureau and other consumer websites about price gouging, overcharging, and engaging in intimidation tactics by Servpro franchises. For instance, the Better Business Bureau profile for Servpro Northeast Salem in Oregon has multiple complaints of fraudulent liens placed on homes after the company damaged property and overcharged for work. Similar complaints exist for franchises in Naperville, Illinois; Douglasville, Georgia; and Marietta, Georgia.
In 2023, when a major storm blew through central California and dumped nearly 5 inches of rain over 24 hours, the floodwaters damaged Wee Shack, a family-run burger restaurant in Morro Bay, a seaside city near San Luis Obispo. The restaurant’s owner, Hoai Duc Ngo, hired Servpro of Morro Bay/King City for water and mold remediation. The company required him to sign a contract to receive an estimate and later told him the work would cost about $130,000 — nearly equal to his entire insurance coverage. When he refused to pay the charges, the company filed a mechanic’s lien against the property and sued him, despite the fact that they hadn’t provided an estimate up front, had done minimal restoration work, and had caused additional property damage. Ngo later had the work completed for about $15,000, and filed counterclaims against the company for negligence, misrepresentation, fraud, and concealment, among other charges.
Owners, volunteers, and community members clean up mud and debris at a coffee shop in Marshall, North Carolina, after Hurricane Helene in 2024. Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images
Some franchises have also faced regulatory action. After Hurricane Florence hit North Carolina in 2018, Servpro of Boise, an Idaho-based franchise, sent workers to the region for cleanup. They approached residents of an apartment building that had suffered water damage, conducted cleanup, and then filed a lien and a lawsuit against the condo owners for $100,000 when they refused to pay what they saw as an exorbitant bill. The North Carolina attorney general’s office took on the case and ultimately settled with the company, canceling the outstanding lien and dismissing the lawsuit. (According to the Better Business Bureau, Servpro of Boise also includes a nondisparagement clause in its contracts with customers, prohibiting them from filing complaints or posting negative reviews.)
But the accountability that happened in North Carolina is rare. Since the rules and regulations for how contractors are required to operate change from one region to another, fraudsters often cross jurisdictional lines after natural disasters to seek out work in regions with the least protections. Amelia Hoppe, co-founder and executive director of Emergency Legal Responders, an organization dedicated to advancing civil rights and justice after natural disasters, said that homeowners need to be particularly careful about out-of-state businesses. “The vetting for local governments is really paying attention to who’s coming in from out of state,” she said.
In at least one case, the national Servpro headquarters does appear to have taken action against a franchise. After multiple complaints from customers of excessive billing, charging for work not performed, and intimidation, the company terminated its agreement in 2018 with Servpro of Rosemead/South El Monte, which operated near Los Angeles. When the franchise continued to operate with Servpro’s logo on a van, the company sued. A federal court ultimately sided with the national company. According to California records, Servpro of Rosemead/South El Monte’s business license is suspended, though where its owners and past employees have gone since is uncertain.
In Camarillo, One Silver Serve displayed red flags typical of fraudulent contractors, experts said. For one, door-to-door canvassing after a natural disaster, though common, can be a telltale sign of predatory behavior aimed at exploiting vulnerable homeowners. The practice is so prevalent among unscrupulous actors that state laws often require a three-day rescission period, giving homeowners and businesses a brief window to cancel contracts signed under pressure at their doorstep. California is one of the states with a three-day rescission period, and for contracts signed in regions with a disaster declaration, the law guarantees seven days to rescind the agreement.
“The lien tactic, especially, we warn about that a lot,” said Hoppe. “It’s legal leverage without informed consent. Even when it’s technically allowed, it often plays out as coercive. People are overwhelmed, underinformed, and don’t have good options.”
Another red flag was that One Silver Serve never provided Crosby an estimate of the damage or a scope of work before starting. Without a detailed breakdown of the planned repairs and their costs, the company could later demand virtually any fee it wanted, consumer advocates warned. In one Camarillo homeowner’s case, the bill they eventually received stretched dozens of pages, with line items like “clean baseboard,” “clean recessed light fixture,” and “clean closet organizer and rod.” None of those items needed cleaning at all — they had to be ripped out and replaced because of fire damage.
A final warning sign, experts said, is failing to confirm whether the insurance company has a track record with the contractor and will cover the repairs.
“A call to the insurance company, an estimate of benefits from the insurance company, these can be valuable checks on the validity of that relationship,” said Keegan Warren, executive director of the Texas A&M Health Institute for Healthcare Access, who has advocated for the role lawyers can play in identifying and combating harmful practices after a disaster.
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers contractors clear the remains of a church burned to the ground in the Eaton Fire, as seen in May in Altadena, California. Mario Tama/Getty Images
For Crosby and others, their experience with One Silver Serve has left them shaken and mistrustful of the disaster-restoration industry. Crosby has since moved back into his house and has been slowly making repairs to the sections that were damaged by the fire. His neighbor, however, faces a longer road to recovery. She’s in the midst of securing permits to rebuild the deck and other parts of the house that burned down. She hopes to be back in her home by January.
“When you tell this story, it’s like, ‘Oh, come on, I had to be stupid,’” she said. “But it’s just unscrupulous. You lose your faith in humanity.”
Meanwhile, One Silver Serve continues to operate in Southern California. In January, after the Palisades Fire took 13 lives and burned more than 23,000 acres in and around Los Angeles, One Silver Serve filed at least seven lawsuits in the Los Angeles Superior Court for breach of contract and other allegations. It’s not clear how many of these cases are similar to the ones the company filed against homeowners in Camarillo.
In an April Facebook post, Servpro highlighted the work of its many franchises, including the cleanup One Silver Serve did after the Palisades Fire. “When Servpro franchises come together, wonderful work results,” the post said.
Achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 will require removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world’s foremost authority on the topic. But only some types of carbon removal are actually effective — and these are largely not the kind that major companies are investing in.
A new report from the NewClimate Institute, a European think tank, finds that 35 of the world’s biggest businesses are leaning on short-term tree-planting and other forms of “nondurable” carbon removal in order to say they’ve neutralized some of their climate pollution. The handful of companies investing in more reliable carbon removal are mostly not doing so in conjunction with deep decarbonization, or the elimination of carbon emissions altogether.
There is a “dangerous mismatch between corporate climate claims and the reality of what is needed to reach global net-zero,” the organization said in a press release. Reaching net-zero by the middle of the century — a scenario where all unavoidable human-caused climate pollution is canceled out via carbon removal — is considered necessary to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit).
Carbon dioxide removal, or CDR, refers to efforts to capture CO2 after it’s been emitted into the atmosphere and store it in rocks, land, ocean reservoirs, or human-made products. The most reliable types of carbon removal, which the NewClimate Institute calls “durable CDR,” involve injecting carbon into geological formations or turning it into rocks, where it will stay put for at least 1,000 years — about the same amount of time that CO2 from the burning of fossil fuels will remain in the atmosphere.
Currently, these durable techniques don’t work at scale: They account for just 0.1 percent of global carbon removal each year. The rest is based on methods like planting trees, restoring wetlands, and burying carbon in the soil, which are much cheaper but can only keep carbon out of the atmosphere for decades or a few centuries at most.
Government investment and regulations are needed to scale up durable CDR — experts consider the next decade to be “crucial” for developing the technology — but the private sector can help too, by funding durable CDR projects and research. In industries like construction, for which total decarbonization is not yet possible, companies will likely need to use durable CDR to offset residual emissions as part of a credible climate strategy.
The NewClimate Institute authors looked at 35 of the world’s largest companies across seven sectors: agrifood, aviation, automobiles, fashion, fossil fuels, tech, and utilities. Tech companies showed the most investment in durable CDR — Microsoft alone is responsible for 70 percent of all durable CDR ever contracted — but the report criticizes the sector for planning to claim “potentially significant amounts” of both durable and nondurable CDR toward net-zero targets. Tech companies can fully decarbonize without offsets, so their emissions targets should not depend on carbon removal.
Aviation was the other sector showing the greatest support for durable CDR, but only one airline — Japan’s All Nippon Airways — had a “reasonable” plan to use the technology to neutralize residual emissions by 2050. Three airlines lacked concrete plans.
Of the 15 companies across the agrifood, automobiles, and fashion sectors, only H&M and Stellantis are investing in durable CDR. Two of the five utilities in the report, Eon and Orsted, are supporting durable CDR projects, but it’s unclear whether Eon intends to use removals to count toward its net-zero goal, and the NewClimate Institute says some of Orsted’s removals are being double-counted in the emissions reduction targets of both Denmark and Microsoft. The five fossil fuel companies analyzed — Equinor, Exxon Mobil, Shell, Sinopec, and TotalEnergies — are focusing mostly on carbon capture and storage, which intercepts CO2 at the point of emission, before it escapes into the atmosphere, and does not reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations.
A Climeworks carbon removal facility in Iceland. John Moore / Getty Images
Silke Mooldijk, an expert with the NewClimate Institute and the lead author of the new report, said she wasn’t surprised to find limited support for durable CDR, except from some tech companies. What did surprise her was that companies investing in durable CDR projects did not publicly report any information on these projects’ environmental and social risks. Some CDR methods, for example, may jeopardize biodiversity, while others require large amounts of renewable energy that would have to be diverted from other uses. “Not a single company in our report disclosed details on potential risks of projects they support and how they mitigate those,” Mooldijk told Grist.
Grist reached out to all 35 companies included in the report. Adidas, Amazon, Enel, Google, H&M, Inditex, Microsoft, and TotalEnergies responded by describing their net-zero commitments. Adidas and Enel, which are not currently investing in durable CDR, said they would use “high-quality” carbon removals to offset their residual climate pollution after taking actions to decarbonize; Inditex said it is “exploring” durable CDR to offset residual emissions, and its use of the technology “will be determined by the evolution of reference scientific frameworks.”
Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and H&M are currently investing in durable CDR. A spokesperson for H&M described the fast-fashion company’s purchase of 10,000 metric tons of durable CDR from the Swiss company Climeworks, one of the largest purchases to date, and said H&M plans to use them to neutralize residual emissions. The tech companies affirmed their commitment to reduce emissions first and then use carbon removal to offset residual emissions, though none of them addressed NewClimate Institute’s concerns that they would use large amounts of durable and nondurable CDR to claim progress toward net-zero.
A statement provided to Grist from TotalEnergies did not address CDR. It instead described the company’s support for carbon capture and storage and “nature-based solutions.” The latter refers to short-lived offsets, such as tree-planting, that the NewClimate Institute does not believe are appropriate for offsetting fossil fuel emissions.
Apple, Duke Energy, Google, and Shein declined to comment after seeing the report. The remaining 24 companies did not respond to inquiries from Grist.
Jonathan Overpeck, a climate scientist at the University of Michigan and the dean of its School for Environment and Sustainability, said the NewClimate Institute report is timely. “Right now the whole idea of CDR … is kind of a Wild West scene, with lots of actors promising to do things that may or may not be possible,” he said. He added that companies appear to be using CDR as an alternative to mitigating their climate pollution.
“The priority has to be on reducing emissions, not on durable CDR at this point,” he told Grist.
In the near term, durable CDR is doing virtually nothing to offset emissions. As of 2023, only 0.0023 gigatons of CO2 were removed from the atmosphere each year using these methods. That’s about 15,000 times less than the annual amount of climate pollution from fossil fuels and cement manufacturing.
According to the NewClimate Institute, voluntary initiatives are no substitute for government-mandated emissions reduction targets and investments in durable CDR. To the extent that these initiatives exist, however, the organization says they should provide a clearer definition of what constitutes “durable” carbon removal; determine companies’ responsibility for scaling up durable CDR based on their ongoing and historical emissions, or — perhaps more realistically — on their ability to pay; and require companies to set separate targets for emissions reductions and support for durable CDR. The last recommendation is intended to reinforce a climate action hierarchy that puts mitigation before offsetting. Companies should not “hide inaction on decarbonization behind investments in removals,” as the report puts it.
Mooldijk said voluntary initiatives can incentivize investments in durable CDR by recognizing “climate contributions.” These might manifest as simple statements about companies’ monetary contributions to durable CDR, instead of claims about the amount of CO2 that they have theoretically neutralized.
Some of these recommendations were submitted earlier this year to the Science-Based Targets initiative, the world’s most respected verifier of private sector climate targets. The organization is getting ready to update its corporate net-zero standard with new guidance on the use of CDR. Another standard-setter, the International Organization for Standardization, is similarly preparing to release new standards on net-zero, which could curtail some of the most questionable corporate climate claims while also drumming up support for durable CDR.
John Reilly, a senior lecturer emeritus at the MIT Sloan School of Management, said that ultimately, proper regulation of corporate climate commitments — including of durable CDR — will fall on governments. Companies “are happy to throw a little money into these things,” he said, “but I don’t think voluntary guidelines are ever going to get you there.”
What has your own involvement in design and craft been?
Since the beginning of my career, my work has centered on supporting emerging talent and making space for deserving voices—a commitment that continues to define Border&Fall. As an agency and lab, our focus is on shifting perceptions of the handmade, with expertise in “Made in India.” My work sits at the intersection of contemporary culture, strategy, and storytelling, partnering with clients globally to connect ideas across markets and disciplines. The agency focuses on branding, strategy, and communication, and it’s been a privilege to help build some of India’s most influential names in lifestyle, fashion, and design.
The lab is what holds my heart. It explores how culture, craft, and technology intersect to address systemic challenges within the handmade sector. Our goal is simple but urgent: to ensure greater economic value is assigned to craft skill and labor, and create greater democratic access to cultural narratives. Most often these end up being digital in nature, from The Sari Series to An Incomplete Manifesto to the Silpa Catalogues.
After 15 years in India, I’ve recently moved to NYC to grow our agency presence here. It’s a fascinating time to reframe “Made in India” as recognition continues to rise. There’s also a unique and delicate opportunity to reposition brands that may seem emerging internationally, but are household names back home.
The Tangaliya weave of Surendranagar has influenced the identity of Border&Fall.
I pitched this article during COVID for two reasons. First, these women who have a transformative legacy on Indian culture are celebrated in craft and academia, but largely absent from popular Indian media—I wanted to help bring more visibility to their work. It was the most read article of the magazine that year…each of them has a unique knowledge and way of looking at the sector, and I think people are fascinated by their stories.
The second reason was more selfish–I love learning from them. Hearing their stories planted the seed for a project we are currently working on, a series of “Made in India” craft monographs.
What are the structural challenges you have noticed that “crafts” in India, and how do they shape its global impact?
Craft in India is closely tied to geography, class, and culture, yet it continues to be undervalued—both in perception and price. Unlike in countries like Japan, where craftsmanship commands respect and premium pricing, India often recognizes skill without offering fair compensation. I often recall the revealing truth in what textile historian Rahul Jain once expressed, “if equitability was a real concern in India, say, via a wage increase that reflects a 21st century valuation of traditional crafts skills and labour, a lot of private players in the field would simply exit. Their profits would fall dramatically.”
Detail of a hand woven fabric using an ambar charkha. Its perceived ‘imperfections’ are integral to its existence and in fact, ‘perfect’ in nature.
Although craft is often cited as India’s second-largest industry after agriculture, quantifying its scale is tough. The last reliable figure from 2023 indicates around 7 million people in the handicraft sector, but unofficial estimates suggest many more (some reports suggest 200 million–the delta is enormous). Without consistent data, effective policy, advocacy, or progress remains limited to measure.
Indian craft runs on two tracks: domestic sales and exports—dominated by the latter, with around $4 billion in exports last year. But this success leans heavily on cheap labor and high markups.
At the Indian Handicraft and Gift Fair in Greater Noida, it hits home. Marble inlay coasters go for just $0.80 apiece, made in factories where legal minimum wages start at ₹178/day (around $2.07). Abroad, those same coasters can sell for $10 or more. No matter how you work it, the math doesn’t favor skilled labour. The question isn’t just whether Indian labor is undervalued, but whether the global market is willing to pay a fair price to support dignified livelihoods in craft. This is a question for both brands and consumers.
An interesting approach is to solve for “hours of labor.” For instance, if a garment is celebrated for requiring 1,200 hours of labor, then how much should it cost to make and sell? Often those numbers don’t add up comfortably.
What are the most common ways the work of craftspeople gets used by designers and creatives?
Craft is incorporated in various ways: as skilled labor (a tailor executing a designer’s vision), through genuine co-creation (designer and karigar collaborating from concept to finish), or via design interventions that tweak form, shape, or color within the craft’s language. Some artisans innovate solo—merging roles of maker, artist, and designer—while others work within inherited traditions with minimal deviation. Yet, even when both designer and karigar embed social meaning and material memory into their work, the karigar often remains invisible.
From top left: Various workshops, (top: Ganga Maki’s private weaving studio in Dehradun, bottom left: Master basket weaver Chato Kuotsu in Khonoma; middle: Interior of a woodworking workshop in Nagaland; bottom right: Detail of an agricultural raincoat).
In most cases the work of craftspeople is most commonly used by designers for its utility or decorative value—often stripped of context. Traditionally functional objects, like terracotta matkas, become symbols or aesthetic statements once removed from their everyday use, especially in Western settings.
Who is a karigar?
Terms like craftspeople or artisan feel too generic—especially given craft in India is deeply rooted in geography. Karigar (कारीगर) carries more geographic specificity given it can be traced through language but even that falls short. A weaver, for instance, would be a bunkar, not a karigar. And karigar itself isn’t exclusive to India—it spans South Asia. It’s nuanced.
Over time, I’ve become more flexible with how these terms are used, while also recognizing that English definitions are, at best, compromises. What we need are new semantics—language that reflects provenance, practice, and value.
One term worth revisiting is the Sanskrit word śilp (शिल्प), often translated simply as craft. But as art historian Stella Kramrisch wrote in 1958, “The meaning of this word is ‘variegated artistic work,’ comprising art, skill, craft, labor, ingenuity, rite and ritual, form and creation.”
Neither artist, artisan, nor craftsman fully capture the complexity of the śilpin (शिल्पिन्) or the karigar (कारीगर). The term holds space for an expansive practice—free of the rigid designer vs. maker binary rooted in Western thought.
Sivakumar Modha, an enterprising weaver designing with technology — from simplifying jacquard punch card creation to digitizing complex weaving patterns — all to make handloom work faster, cheaper, and smarter for traditional weavers.
How can we move beyond using craft as a novelty, a marketing hook or a surface treatment and truly center the makers and the process in what we create?
Craft has a direct relationship to production but first and foremost it has a relationship with the person. Practiced by communities over generations, it is a way of life for many. The Khumbars (potters) predict rainfall through their craft based on how clay behaves in response to atmospheric changes, and looms in homes occupy the most square footage of space.
Kanta Kadse from Mandla, Madhya Pradesh a skilled Khajur Broom maker, one of the many karigars featured in Border&Fall’s Silpa Catalogs.
I think the decorative or novelty aspect is much more prevalent in the craft export product, which is large (accounting for almost 4 percent of India’s GDP). In much of India, it is still connected to everyday utility, alongside being decorative.
“Design” credit often goes solely to the commissioner. This reflects a hierarchy imposed by design and consumer cultures. I’ve asked many karigars (craftspeople)—they see themselves as both designers and makers.
Label by Kardo, which credits every maker who has worked on the garment.
In Matters of Hand (2018), curator Rashmi Varma addressed this challenge. In one video, eight men are seen hand-beating a Kansa (bronze alloy)—a single step among many in crafting a bowl. Instead of crediting a single karigar, she listed every hand that touched the product. Some pieces had up to ten names. While not exhaustive, it mirrored the layered reality. Film is the only creative industry that credits contributions this deeply—and it’s a practice I believe craft could benefit from economically, although not a blanket suggestion.
Left: Tools used for making Kansa vessels Middle: Communal hammering by the Kansari craftsmen integral part of the process to make the vessels Right: Kansa vessels, image by Prarthna Singh from Sār: The Essence of Indian Design.
What is something that is often misunderstood about craft?
There are so many things that are misunderstood, even amongst us working in this space. A few that come to mind:
● Craft is not one mass. “Craft” employs well over the official estimate of 7 Million people in India–it includes the lohawalla (metalsmith), silk carpet weaver, to the potter—yet data often treats it as a monolith. Without better categorization, the public can’t understand the scale, complexity, or value of what’s being made.
● The notion that “handmade” equals sustainable is not always true. For instance, cotton production and dyeing can be water resource-heavy, working conditions are often harsh, and what’s sold as natural often contains chemical additives.
● Craft is unfortunately judged by industrial standards. The disclaimer “imperfections are due to it being handmade” misses the point. These aren’t flaws; they are intrinsic to the handmade process.
● India is both a design and manufacturing powerhouse–we are both mind and hand. Major global brands from Tom Dixon, Uniqlo, Chanel, and the LVMH group all produce here. Yet India is still largely seen as a nameless producer, not as a leader in design thinking. It’s been amazing to see the beginnings of this changing over the last three-to-five years with more brands in the international space, and more credit being asked for. The backtracking Prada recently did for their SS26 collection and use of the Kholapuri is one example.
● Khadi does not equal handspun and handwoven. While Gandhi’s Khadi was spun on a Desi Charkha, most Khadi today—including that sold by Khadi Gram Udyog—since 1955 are spun on the semi-mechanized Ambar Charkha, yet it’s still defined as Khadi. Semantics matter, especially as processes change behind the scenes.
● Craft is expected to stay cheap. Some things—like terracotta chai cups—should remain accessible. But many crafts are severely undervalued. Discount culture keeps wages low, even when they meet legal minimums. We need pricing transparency.
Craft often carries the burden of aestheticized truth. How do you see designers or brands using the “aura” of honest labor to tokenize craftsmen? Has labor become performative—Disneyfied—for marketing?
For Indian visual and material culture, the crafts are foundational. It is a knowledge base from which a lot of ways of seeing and making extend out of. Some designers are framed as saviors of craft—the international media loves this narrative. Locally, craft isn’t a headline; it’s foundational to every design practice.
Highly performative marketing tropes have already peaked, leading with the romanticization of handmade. It cleverly helps solve one of the largest problems design is facing: vacuous consumption. These tropes worked well but–how many hands on a loom can one see that exoticize and reinforce the “nameless worker”?. Point number seven in An Incomplete Manifesto was written to address this: “Transcend marketing trends. There is a delicate balance between revealing a process and pandering to the exoticism of ‘behind the scenes’ studio and weaving documentation.”
Broadly speaking, it has not evolved much past the problematic marketing campaigns of the 1990s “Feed Africa” campaigning, building and reinforcing stereotypes. From a branding lens, it’s tricky—anyone sharing their process now risks being seen as reacting to the trend of selective transparency. In our work we find a lens the client can lean into while still being true to the practice. When it’s non-performative the honesty is inescapable.
There are such strong aesthetic tropes whenever Indian design is shown–such as the glorified “maharaja” archetype. Why is that trope so resonant?
There are three dominant aesthetic schools in consumer India: Kitsch, Royal, and Rural. Globally, the royal archetype reigns—it signals a dated but enduring idea of “arrival,” and aligns neatly with the massive revenues of India’s billion-dollar bridal market.
How would you describe the other two?
The kitsch archetype is where we see the peacocks, cows and “tuk-tuks” and is reinforced largely by those outside India. I think the most compelling is the “rural” archetype — Gandhian in its austerity—with a color palette that ranges from terracotta, ash, and white to vibrant rani pinks and lime greens. Mistakenly, these are largely seen as “contemporary” or “minimalist” India, the truth being they have been present all along. Over the last 15 years we have seen a huge homegrown renaissance in this space.
Is there a phrase or word from a regional language that has really stayed with you when talking about craft?
The Idea of Riyaaz comes to mind–I love all the meanings of that word–of a committed, disciplined practice and pursuit of mastery.
How can we all be better collaborators to those who make craft?
Sometimes defining a term makes it easier to measure or engage with. I would define true collaborations, in essence, as a mutually beneficial exchange. Both parties derive pleasure, growth and different, yet relatively equitable, outcomes.
I would also invite a shift from recognizing “hands” to recognizing “minds.”
Left: Ajrakh piece by Aslam Abdulkarim Khatri, a generational Ajrakh artist and founder of the brand Mahfooz and a graduate of Somaiya Kala Vidya. Right: Khalid Amin Khatri is an Ajrakh artist from Ajrakhpur, Gujarat, known for his bold, asymmetrical take on traditional block printing, and a Kala Raksha Vidyalaya alum, his work was featured in the V&A’s Fabric of India exhibition (2015).
We often find that so much of what is written in the past is still relevant. For instance almost 40 years ago (in 1986), the artist K.G. Subramanyan’s manuscript “Do Hands Have a Chance?” stated: “Another important condition we need to give attention to are just wages or returns for the craftsmen. If we do not ensure this, by whatever means, the future of specialised handicrafts is bleak.” Decades later–and all the decades in between–his words still hold. And at the crux, that’s the main problem.
How do you form relationships with karigars in your own practice?
Like most of my relationships, it’s formed over a shared connection and time. I’ve travelled on the ground extensively and we’ve followed each other’s journeys over the years.
More specifically, I believe craftspeople are often spoken for rather than with, and our work tries to account for that sensitivity. For example, for a panel talk I led for Architectural Digest India, I planned a karigar-only lineup with translators. It was the first time I could facilitate a truly equal dialogue amongst peers. The artisans spoke in Hindi, English, Meitei Lon, and Gujarati—avoiding tokenism and allowing for more genuine exchange.
Respecting the karigar’s role also means acknowledging their creative authorship. A designer may provide a sketch, but it’s the weaver who mathematically calculates the loom setup, or the embroiderer who interprets and executes the design—often making critical creative decisions.
Top right: Rajesh Paratap Singh’s AW16 Merino wool suit with asymmetric banker stripes made by chains handwoven into wool. Photography by Namit Sirohi. Top left: campaign shot from ITOH LOT 14 SS 24, photograph by Sahil Babber; Bottom Left and Right: From Raw Mango, campaign shots from Children of the Night which explores technical weaving innovations, shot by Vikas Maurya and Cloud People, which focused on Chikankari, shot by Ashish Shah.
I’m also mindful of the Western gaze. The work we do—and that of our clients—resists postcolonial dilution in favor of authentic design narratives. Raw Mango is a strong example: questioning inherited beliefs while imagining new futures, all rooted in contemporary culture, of which tradition plays a large role. We’ve worked with Raw Mango since 2013–and in building their communication I’ve seen firsthand the impact of consistent, values-driven storytelling—theirs being culturally focused. Many share this ethos, each with distinct aesthetics but aligned in greater vision, including — Rashmi Varma, Out of the Shed, Khanoom, Itoh, Péro, and Rajesh Pratap Singh.
Top left: Work in progress of a Pietra Dura table by Frozen Music Jaipur Top center: A carrom board reimagined with marble inlay by Out of the Shed.Top left: Mountain Carousel made from marquetry off-cuts by Out of the Shed; Bottom left: Matka Jug by Studio IKKIS, made from pure copper with a terracotta coating Bottom center, right: Shisha ka kam and houndstooth ari ka kaam from Rashmi Varma.
How does craft advocacy work financially?
In India, the current funding is for on-the ground livelihood initiatives. Government and other available funds largely seem to acknowledge this as the parameter. Although this is important, I believe we need more technology based initiatives which favor widespread democratic reach and adoption. I understand that’s a large mental gap to bridge–people are often wary of what they don’t understand.
We created The Sari Series, a free digital resource that documents the regional sari draping styles of India, with $120,000. It took us a year to knock on doors and I kept being asked how many weavers it would impact, which I didn’t have an answer to. Its advocacy was focused on the demand, not supply side. Finally, we raised $50,000 on Kickstarter and found a lead patron in Anita Lal of Good Earth–she was brave enough to support this approach. The project is critically acclaimed, and in the last seven years since its release we’ve been able to measure how the perception of the sari drape has changed globally, The Sari Series has millions of views and informed a host of sari influencers online and most importantly, had given agency back to tens of thousands of people to revisit their relationship with the sari on their own terms. #TheSariSeries on Instagram is a testament to its usage.
The softer powers of culture and craft have the potential to influence change, and till date India has understandably had most funding models and philanthropy focused on livelihoods. As we grow economically I believe we will see more support for “seemingly” alternative projects.
Montage of how to drape the Yakshagana Mali Kase Drape from The Sari Series.
Don’t you feel that in craft, innovation often takes a backseat to “revival,” “continuity,” and “preservation”?
Yes. In the design and business worlds we often appoint ourselves as custodians of craft, imposing ideas of authenticity and preservation. But that desire can be counterproductive—craft is a living, adaptive skill. On a trip to Bhuj, I saw women making sheesha potlis using mirrored plastic and acrylic instead of glass and silk. What we might see as dilution, they saw as innovation—aspirational materials they were proud to use.
We all respond to fine craftsmanship, and it’s easy to mourn the loss of skill. But why is the burden always on the karigar to preserve it? When will the life of a karigar be seen as aspirational by the very people romanticizing their work?
Is there a contradiction you’ve made peace with in your own work?
Working within consumption-driven systems has taught me how they function, where they fall short, and my comfort level within them. I choose to engage with a mindset of enoughness, shaping work that imagines new forms of value, longevity, and peace beyond constant acquisition.
How can we form a trust in skills and community, rather than consumerism?
To be fair, we have been conditioned to seek validation in our purchases. Many things are bought driven by this need. If we removed brand names and marketing on products, it would be interesting to see what people bought given their own volition. This is effectively what we are asking people to do for craft product. It takes conviction of self and an understanding of process and material alongside an aesthetic alignment.
Jyotindra Jain classifies craft patronage into three categories: the court, the temple, and village. I wonder if we could add new ones now to this line of patronage?
Design practitioners and hopefully, the everyday consumer.
Malika Verma recommends:
The journey and destination to Chato Kuotsu, a Kophi Cane basket weaver in Khonoma, Nagaland.
For Donna Thomas, smokestacks are a typical sight from her home in Fort Bend County, Texas. Since she was a child, she has seen the coal and natural gas-powered W.A. Parish Generating Station puff clouds of haze during the day and light up brightly at night. The facility — which has been around since 1958 — is both part of the background and all she thinks about.
Thomas is not alone. For decades, residents have expressed concerns over the pollution emitted from the Parish coal plant — a separate facility from the natural gas plant — and called for its closure. The plant, located about 30 miles southwest of downtown Houston, is ranked by Texas environmental regulators as one of the worst polluters in the state for certain hazardous emissions. These include mercury, a toxic heavy metal particularly harmful for children and pregnant people.
This year, mercury has been top of mind for environmental activists and residents like Thomas. In April, President Donald Trump announced an exemption for companies from implementing stricter Biden-era mercury regulations for two years. Of the 163 eligible coal plants, 11 are in Texas and six have been approved, including Parish’s operator, NRG Energy. In Missouri and Illinois, five coal plants have been exempted, and in Pennsylvania, all 12 of the coal plants seeking approval have been approved.
Then in July, Trump exempted chemical companies for two years from Biden’s 2024 HON Rule, a set of regulations that control hazardous air emissions from chemical plants called the Hazardous Organic National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants.
The Trump administration determined the exemptions are in the country’s best interest and represent a burden on industry, and that the technology is not available to meet stricter regulations. Companies like NRG agree.
However, critics say the Biden administration’s 2024 Mercury and Air Toxics Standards — called MATS for short — and the HON Rule were long overdue and the two-year delay in implementing them is merely a tactic to protect industry profit margins at the expense of public health.
Moreover, critics point out that the MATS delay may be giving companies the freedom to ignore toxic air emissions rules until the Trump administration repeals the Biden-era regulations altogether. In June, the Environmental Protection Agency under Trump proposed a rule to eliminate the 2024 MATS rule completely.
The two rules together have set off alarm bells for experts and environmentalists in Texas, home to one of the world’s largest petrochemical sectors and 11 coal-powered plants. The exemptions will run from 2027 — when the Biden rules were supposed to take effect — to 2029.
“We know these rollbacks are not good for anyone, especially for those that are community fenceline,” said Thomas, also the founder and president of the Fort Bend Environmental — a grassroots organization focused on environmental justice. “We have around 1,000 homes within 3 miles of Parish, so that’s going to affect all of them.”
A two-year delay
The EPA has been working on stricter environmental regulations for chemical plants since the early 1990s. Only in 2020 did Biden’s EPA begin drafting new rules in earnest.
But owners of the chemical plants should not act so surprised, said Neil Carman, a former regulator for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.
“The chemical industry has known for decades that this was all coming, but they don’t like rules, because it means they have to put on more pollution control and they have to do more leak inspections,” said Carman, now the clean air director for the Texas chapter of the Sierra Club. “These plants will always tell you, ‘Safety first, safety first,’ but then you run into this thing called money.”
Of the 79 chemical facilities in Texas requesting exemptions, 15 have been approved, including 13 along the Gulf Coast and the so-called petrochemical corridor.
Carman pointed out that the heads of chemical companies have been in talks with Trump’s EPA since the election. In March, the administration announced that companies could apply for exemption from MATS, HON, and seven other sets of emissions standards.
That same month, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin met with Dow Inc. Chairman-CEO Jim Fitterling to discuss regulations imposed by the Biden administration, according to public records and emails obtained by the Sierra Club.
In one email sent on March 17, Dow reps asked to discuss “clarity” on the EPA’s recent announcement that it will reconsider the HON rule and “Dow has met with the Office of Air and Radiation regarding an extension of the current compliance deadline, which is impossible to meet.”
In May, Zeldin met with Fitterling and other chemical company CEOs to discuss the industry at large. Then in July, Trump announced the exemptions for HON, including for two chemical plants in Louisiana and one in Seadrift, Texas, operated by Dow and its subsidiary Union Carbide.
In a statement to Capital & Main, a Dow spokesperson said that “safety and integrity are at the core of both companies’ operations” and the “extensions are appropriate and necessary to address the technical challenges and to ensure the continued safe and efficient operation of these facilities.”
Carman doesn’t buy it. He worked as an environmental regulator in Texas for 12 years. Even then, he said, companies never seemed to be able to find the budget to limit their emissions and chemical leaks. For him, it’s still the cost.
“A lot of these are old plants and so when they go in and do all this work,” Carman said, “they have to find a place where they’re going to put in new controls and they have to engineer it. They have to design it all. It’s months of planning, but these rules were out there. They knew they were coming. They just want two more years of delay.”
Limiting mercury
When the EPA implemented the 2012 MATS rule, mercury emissions dropped 86 percent — or 4 tons — in five years.
In 2024, Biden’s EPA approved a rule to strengthen MATS by tightening the emissions standards for mercury by another 70 percent and reducing pollutants discharged through wastewater from coal-fired plants by more than 660 million pounds per year.
The rule could prevent as many as 11,000 premature deaths, 2,800 cases of chronic bronchitis, and 130,000 asthma attacks, according to the EPA under Biden.
However, in April, Trump approved the exemptions for 47 coal-powered plants across the nation. As of mid-August, 70 are now exempted, including Parish.
“These rules were just so critically important to people’s health,” said Surbhi Sarang, senior attorney for the Environmental Defense Fund. The Trump administration “was doing this process that was just not transparent. I mean, there was no process. Whereas in rulemaking, there’s public comment. This is just like a presidential action that was kind of taken in a vacuum and then announced.”
In response to the exemption, Erik Linden, senior director of communications at NRG, said the time is needed and will be used to evaluate the technology for air quality systems and monitoring equipment for compliance.
“All existing MATS emission controls will be properly maintained and remain in service,” Linden said of the current MATS rules that began in 2012. The exemption would give NRG until 2029 to implement the changes.
However, in July, Trump’s EPA proposed eliminating Biden’s rule entirely by the end of the year. Interested parties had three weeks to submit comments, and the Environmental Defense Fund’s request for an extension was denied.
“Rulemaking usually takes 12-18 months if not longer,” Sarang said. “They’re moving very quickly.”
All of this is alarming for residents living near industry. With the extent of the changes to environmental regulations coming down from the Trump administration, there’s a lot for Thomas, the Parish generating station neighbor, to process. But she hasn’t given up. Increasingly, Thomas is talking to her neighbors and fellow residents about fighting back.
This means sending letters to representatives in Texas and in Washington, D.C. Thomas said it pays to be loud.
Parish is “going to do the same thing it’s been doing,” Thomas said. “If the EPA does not put a stop to these [emissions] getting out, then everyone is going to pay for this with their lives and in their water and in their air.”
Vegan dining is in flux: headline-making closures of brick-and-mortar spots are colliding with a surge in private chefs, curated meal drops, and delivery-first brands. The shift is visible from Miami to New York to Los Angeles, powered by two forces moving in opposite directions: costs rising for restaurants and demand rising for at-home convenience. The result is an ecosystem where a night of plant-based lasagna baked at home, a chef-catered dinner party, and a ghost-kitchen burger can all live in the same week for the same consumer.
The economics behind the pivot
Restaurants are paying more for everything from fryer oil to payroll, and consumers keep ordering off-premises in high numbers. The National Restaurant Association reports average menu prices are up roughly 31 percent since February 2020, while key wholesale food costs climbed about 37 percent—pressure that squeezes already thin margins. At the same time, three in four operators say off-premises—takeout and delivery—are a significant part of their business, a behavior they expect to stick.
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The pressure shows at the neighborhood level, too. In Miami, former Planta Queen pastry and sushi chefs Erica Marie Denis and Gabriel Lopez told Miami New Times that the chain’s Coconut Grove location closed with little warning. “We received notice on July 30 that we were basically immediately terminated,” says Denis. She remembers diners arriving as usual: “A lot of people went to Planta Queen not knowing that it would be the last time they would be eating there,” she says. “Even we, as employees, there were people in the building working when we received notice.”
Private chefs, meal drops, and a chef’s touch
What has replaced some of those lost dining rooms is not a one-to-one swap, but a patchwork of higher-touch, at-home offerings. In Los Angeles, private chef Aaron Elliott has turned the skills he honed for A-listers into Meal Ticket, a weekly, plant-based drop that reads like a chef’s tasting menu reimagined for your fridge. His service releases a new menu midweek with Monday evening delivery or pickup. Priced at $250, orders are capped at ten, and each order includes six mix-and-match dishes meant to carry a household through the week.
Elliott’s model mirrors a larger consumer pivot toward premium meal services. CookUnity, a chef-to-consumer platform, said it surpassed $500 million in annual recurring revenue this spring—evidence that diners will pay for restaurant-quality food at home. Meanwhile, the US meal kit category is hardly fading; IBISWorld pegs 2025 market size around $8.7 billion, and mainstream food media continue to rank prepared and kit services that foreground plant-forward options such as Purple Carrot and Green Chef.
Purple Carrot
The Miami chefs who lost their jobs at Planta are leaning into this direction. Denis says she and Lopez launched a private vegan service, 2TheRootss, to bring restaurant-quality meals straight to clients. “My boyfriend and I offer a private chef experience at clients’ homes. That’s been our way of providing high-quality vegan food to people who are interested,” Denis says. Her advice for locals hunting for good plant-based cooking: find the small operators that cook like a market cafeteria. “They actually have a rotating menu—think about it like hot prepared foods. You can go there and kind of build your own plate,” she explains.
In New York, the take-and-bake category shows how chef craft is migrating home. Cucina Fantasma, a Brooklyn-based vegan lasagna brand that just debuted last week, sells a Classic-ish pan layered with fresh pasta, slow-simmered seitan bolognese, tofu ricotta, and koji-almond mozzarella, designed to bake at home or stash in the freezer. As founder Lindsey Masterman puts it: “Lasagna is supposed to feel indulgent, satisfying, and celebratory. But I wanted to reimagine it for the New York lifestyle. These are lasagnas you can look forward to on a weeknight—or use as the centerpiece of your next dinner party, all just by turning on your oven.” Early drops include limited production, pickup in Downtown Brooklyn, and DoorDash delivery on Mondays and Tuesdays.
Ghost kitchens, hybrids, and the new distribution
So where do ghost kitchens fit in 2025? The pure delivery-only food hall has cooled from its pandemic-era hype, but the core idea—using lower-cost production space and virtual brands to expand reach—has not disappeared. Restaurant Business reports many virtual brands are “getting a little physical,” jumping onto in-store menus or opening limited-service counters, while industry experts point to an evolution toward hybrid footprints rather than a collapse. In practice, some operators use multi-brand platforms to monetize spare kitchen capacity while they rebuild dine-in.
Delivery demand continues to prop up these experiments. DoorDash’s 2025 survey finds that nearly half of consumers make delivery decisions in five to ten minutes, three-quarters placed a last-minute delivery order in the prior month, and almost half prefer ordering through third-party apps for ease—behavior that fuels fast-turn virtual brands, chef drops, and prepared vegan mains that bake off in a home oven.
There are bright spots on the traditional side, too. The Atlanta burger empire Slutty Vegan remains a cultural touchstone for plant-based comfort food, even as it restructures. Founder Pinky Cole re-acquired the brand in March and has described a tighter “Slutty Vegan 2.0” footprint; the website still lists open restaurants from Brooklyn to Baltimore. The through-line across vegan dining now is clear: more routes to the plate.
Madelynne Boykin
For diners, the takeaway is choice. Sit down at one of the surviving brick-and-mortar eateries. Order a nostalgia hit from a virtual brand. Book a chef for a night at home, or reserve a weekly slot on a drop like Meal Ticket. For professionals, the lesson is to design for an audience that loves plants and flexibility. As Denis puts it, “We don’t really have that many vegan restaurants in Miami,” Denis says. “Gabriel and I are passionate vegans and know there is a demand for vegan food here in Miami.”
This post was originally published on VegNews.com.
Earlier this month an Australian-based Uyghur group launched legal action against Kmart in the federal court. The case has put the retailer’s supply chain under scrutiny for potential links to forced labour in China’s Xinjiang province.
Nour Haydar speaks with senior reporter Ben Doherty about the legal action against Kmart and the warnings that Australia could become a dumping ground for products linked to forced labour
Tell me about the first time you made a candle and how that experience led you to founding your business?
The first time I ever made a candle was with a candle-making kit that I stole from my sister. She had gotten the kit from Michael’s, and was selling candles at her home-ec fair in eighth grade. She made really cool stuff using paraffin wax or whatever she could get. I remember her pouring them into weird vessels like takeout containers. I love to craft and make things and I spent my after-school time at the craft store taking classes. After graduating from college, Etsy was starting to take off and I wanted to start an Etsy shop of my own. I thought, what can I make? I’ll make candles. So I bought some vintage molds and used my own molds too. The vintage aspect really speaks to the nostalgic ethos that P.F. still has, and this DIY spirit where I’m like, “What can I do? I’m going to make that.”
Have you been able to maintain that DIY spirit as the business has grown?
It’s so tricky. I was recently talking to a friend who just opened a rock store, and it’s so cool. He’s such a rock nerd in the best way, and I had the thought that he’d made this grave error of turning his passion and creativity into a business. But, he’s got this really specific vision in how he’s executing it. It’s so clear he’s not only trying to make money, but also to bring his vision to life.
There’s definitely been times throughout my career of making things where I felt super disconnected from what we were actually doing because I was busy running the business, so I try to carve out time to make things, and it’s not always candles. I also make incense. I have an entire craft closet. I’m always trying to paint with my daughter and do things that feel easy and that keep my hands busy, it helps turn off my mind.
What have you gained by growing your passion into a business? Have you had to sacrifice anything in the process?
I’ve gained so much through the process of growing P.F. I’ve been able to do my Etsy shop dream, and it’s such a funny job, I run a candle company. I don’t necessarily remember a moment where I thought, I’m going to grow the business. At the beginning I was very scrappy and took every opportunity that came our way. Of course, there were also conscious choices that led to growth, like taking on bigger orders, scaling, and hiring staff. Having started my business in the bottom of the recession in 2008, I operated on a scarcity mentality where I was so afraid that I wouldn’t get these opportunities again. We were like let’s grow, let’s hustle, and it felt fun. As we were growing very rapidly, I remember that we felt like it was going by so fast that we didn’t get to enjoy the moments where we were a ten person company.
Now we’re in a more stable time, we’re not in that rapid growth phase anymore. What I really like about this phase is that I get to enjoy the size that we are and feel the benefits of being this size, versus being a larger company. We were up to 95 people at one point, and that’s a really different type of company to run. In the beginning, Tom and I definitely sacrificed having a lot of friends. We had just moved to downtown LA, so we were in a new place, and it took us a really long time to make a group of friends because we were so focused on the business. I am happy to report I do have some friends now.
The scents you develop feel like direct channels to nature. Do your fragrances result from pointed research or do ideas arise by osmosis, through spending time in nature?
The osmosis thing is real. Nature is a huge source of inspiration, and I always say our scents smell very true to life. I don’t want them to be too cloying or overpowering. My sister-in-law and Tom are so sensitive to fragrance, so keeping it very light and smelling as true to life as possible is a goal of ours.
For our Hi-Fi Collection, which is our premium line, we pull all of the fragrance inspiration from fine fragrance by looking at what’s really popular in perfumery right now, and trying to create fragrances based on that. Skin scents are also huge. What would a light musky scent in a candle look like, and how would that apply to home fragrance? We’re still not doing body fragrance. We’ve dabbled in it, but our niche is obviously home scent and you want those to smell very different. Trying to pull inspiration from perfumery when those scents settle so differently on the skin than in wax is very fun.
Can you talk about your materials and the importance of sourcing?
We use soy wax. I think it’s cool that it’s grown here in America and that it’s lowering our carbon footprint to use it. I went to the factory where it’s made a couple years ago and saw it transformed from oil. They ran it through this 13 story whirling machine to purify it, essentially. They then ran it over an ice roller to turn it into flakes. It was so fascinating.
In terms of other materials, it’s about understanding where things are coming from. As I learned more about perfumery and I started looking at our MSDS [material safety data sheet] differently, I was really able to start recognizing some of the ingredients and familiarize myself with the different compounds and how they make up the structure of the fragrances. I felt a deepening [connection to my materials] when I started to understand the MSDS from the ingredient standpoint too. Connecting to the materials makes you feel connected to the process. For the incense workshop I’m teaching, we’re making it from scratch using a Mako powder in the base, and then adding in different plant materials. I have all of this sage growing in my front yard right now and I was cutting it back because it was overgrown, and I realized that I could use it for the workshop. It smells so good. I’m really excited to say I grew this sage and now we’re using it as a fragrant material.
Do you ever collaborate with other makers?
We love to host makers at our shop and to me that’s giving back because it’s how I got my start. In terms of collaborations, we just started doing that a couple years ago. We’ve collaborated with everyone from Toy Machine to Peanuts. We just collaborated with a cycling brand this year, Grin27. They’re a super small operation, really cool and niche. And we just did one with Sempervirens, which is a Redwoods conservation agency. We’re working on one coming out later this year that I can’t leak yet, it’s a food collaboration. Things come our way and sometimes it’s such a cool opportunity and can also feel so random. We get the opportunity to create a profile based on something that you wouldn’t think has a smell like with Toy Machine, it was the smell of the maple they use in their skateboard decks.
That’s so cool! What a nice way to keep the energy fresh and expand the way you consider what a scent can be.
I completely agree. This is the biggest thing collaborations have been for us. You would think that getting a request to make a scent based on these specific things would be a box, but it actually allows you to shine because you’re creating something that is out of your wheelhouse. That’s how we really started exploring different angles, and some of our new scents are things that were cast offs from collaborations that we’d worked on that didn’t go through, but the scent was incredible and a new vein for us.
The other thing that I’ve been getting more into is workshops. I’m teaching them myself, and it’s been so fun to get back into the candle making aspect of it that I don’t feel I usually have time for. That is my space where I really experiment. I’ll pull five to eight fragrances for the class and it will be designed for whoever I’m co-hosting with. In class, I’m not only getting to blend my own fragrances, but I’m seeing the reactions of everybody around the room to all of these different types of scents and learning more by being in person, and it reminds me of my roots when I did craft fairs. It’s been a really fun thing from me, a very different outcome of what I had expected going in.
The community building aspect must be an important element in keeping the spark around your work alive.
It feels like moving into a teaching role. When I’m preparing for these workshops, I’ll do a lot of research on the materials that we’re using, and it’s in that process that I feel really passionate and excited. I guess I’m kind of a nerd, too. I can’t wait to share these fragrance packs with people. And I don’t know whether it’s landing, but when you speak to someone who’s so passionate about what they’re doing and so excited about the knowledge that they’re sharing, you can feel it.
I’m sure it’s landing for people! Scent is so important, it connects us to memory and nostalgia in unique ways. Can you talk a bit more about your personal relationship to scent and what power you think it holds?
I really recognize the nostalgic aspect of it, and I like to use it to bookend periods of my life. If I’m going through a bad or stressful time I stop wearing all perfumes and become aware of what fragrances I’m using at my house on repeat, because I don’t want to lose a favorite scent to a sad time. It’s such a bizarre thing, but it is so fun the way that scent can encapsulate entire chapters.
I have a fragrance that I made with a natural perfumer here in LA at one of the first perfume workshops that I did. I called it Big Sur and I wore it for pretty much two years. It reminds me so much of building a business because I wore it to work, and it was a time when I was really investing in myself, learning more about fragrance and not just being a maker, but being able to present myself knowing about fragrance and perfume as well. Smelling it brings back this hit of nostalgia. It’s all the ambient scents that surround you and the laundry detergent and weird niche things, cleaning agents. I like to mix my own stuff for that. I also make my own face oils. I love thinking about creating these scents that by layering them, become so deeply personal to you.
What kind of impact do you hope you’re having on people’s lives through your company and your teaching?
My first impact would be on my staff and my team. When Tom and I set out to grow the company we didn’t really realize what we were doing, but we knew that we wanted to earn enough to make a living for ourselves. First and foremost I want to make sure that I am providing for our staff, making sure we’re paying them well and creating a good atmosphere. We’re doing fully subsidized healthcare. The second thing is allowing people to access luxury candles at an accessible price point. That’s my balancing act, is to pay my team well enough to make these incredible products, but also get [the candles] priced well enough that they can hit the market and people can burn them every day.
The unexpected thing about working in fragrances is that sometimes you’re just running the business, you’re like, “I’m just making these things, do people like it?” Then someone says, “Your candle was there during this really hard period of my life,” or “We used these scents during our wedding,” and you realize that people tie fragrance to their memories, and it can be this source of comfort or this little luxury that they’re using every day that cheers them up. That’s the really cool thing that I’ve been trying to stay connected to. I’ve been working in the shops more so that I can basically gossip with the customers. I want to know everything, I want them to tell me their life story. I love chatting to people.
It sounds like you’re doing a great job at remaining connected to why you started this project in the first place–it’s hard to do while things grow and evolve.
Oh, absolutely. I came up in that girl boss era. I had my craft fair friends, and then when I stopped doing craft fairs and didn’t see them as much, I remember thinking, who is my community? Then I started seeing a lot of people getting investment and growing and selling their business. It felt more like what they were selling was the business itself versus being connected to the product and wanting to be conscious of what they were bringing into the world. It’s just a different kind of mindset. I’ve really tried to stay close to what we’re doing and what we’re making.
Do you have a vision for the future of P.F. Candle Co.?
I’m thinking about the vision all the time, but this year, I will be completely honest that with all the changes that have happened, having to navigate constant shifts from the administration, I just have to live in the present. I feel like this is the year of the present and just trying to navigate down the river. I think a lot about the growth for P.F. and what I want for it, and what I’ve been connecting with is opening more retail stores.
It feels like a return to our roots, and I love creating the spaces, interiors; that’s my happy space. I’ve been thinking about how the product connects to those interior spaces and trying to continue to bring those to life in our retail stores so people have a space that they feel inspired by and connected to. I love the retail store. I love a good shopping experience, when you go in and you feel like you have incredible service. You make a connection with the person working there, and they know what they’re talking about, and you get excited. It’s like my rock guy. I love rocks anyway, but he made me so excited. And then we have a new scent coming out in July that I’m very excited about because it’s a very P.F. scent, so when we talk about getting back to your roots, that’s what this year feels like, getting back to our roots.
Kristen Pumphrey recommends:
Riding your bike instead of driving in LA
Stalogy 365 Notebook: the thinnest pages that become perfectly crinkly and sound amazing after you write on them in ballpoint
Pruning/cutting back your plants and garden – extremely satisfying immersive work
Beyond Meat
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Purple Carrot
Madelynne Boykin