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After grabbing a handful of popcorn at an event held by California-based startup Savor, my fingers are left with a familiar sheen: the residue of the butter that coats the small kernels. When I later grab a blini (topped with lentils), the small pancake is so full of butter that it immediately coats my tongue in a velvety layer of fat. A mushroom scallop, grilled in butter, is rich and savory. The butter used in all these dishes is rich, creamy, indulgent. But it isn’t made from animals. It isnt even made from plants, like avocado oil or coconut oil or olive oil. Instead, its made from energyon this night specifically, methane. [Photo: courtesy Savor] Savor, a 3-year-old startup backed by Bill Gates, makes fats and oils without agriculture. Usually, the most basic formula to create any sort of fat goes like this: Energy (predominantly from the sun, though you could also use something like indoor grow lights) grows plants, which can then be turned into oils themselves, or be fed to livestock, which then produce milk that’s turned into butter. Savor skips all those in-between steps. Instead, energymethane, captured carbon dioxide, or even green hydrogenis turned into butter through a thermochemical process that turns carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen into fatty acids. Those fatty acids can then be composed and rearranged to form triglycerides that make up different fats like butter, palm oil, cocoa butter, and more. Its Earths most ancient chemistry, says Kathleen Alexander, cofounder and CEO of Savor, explaining how billions of years ago, at the bottom of the ocean, hydrothermal vents created a chemical reaction between hydrogen and carbon dioxide to form fatty acids. [Photo: courtesy Savor] That means Savors butter eschews not only animals and plants but also the land associated with agriculture, hormones, antibiotics, and fertilizersall of which have environmental impacts. All told, the current production of fats and oils makes up around 7% of global emissions, per a Savor calculation done in collaboration with environmental scientists. Thats more than double the global emissions of the aviation industry. Savor currently uses methane or carbon dioxide emitted from factories, and aims to work with companies focused on air capture, or extracting CO2 directly from the atmosphere. For so long, cofounder Ian McKay says, weve exploited nature to make all of our food. I think Savor is considering, are there cases where you can leave nature out and still get what you want? [Photo: Sara S. Wallach/courtesy Savor] Throughout the meal at Savors event, the butter was featured in a variety of ways. Served in a ramekin alongside bread and crudités, it had a clean taste, with a slightly earthy, peppery finish, thanks to the addition of rosemary. By itself, the butter wasnt the richest or saltiestit was formulated to be more of a pastry butter, the team explained, to laminate well into doughs; it was still creamy, and held up well while sitting out at the table. It was thick and spreadable, not melting too quickly like oil-based butter alternatives, but easily saturating the bread. (Savor’s butter is also allergen-free.) [Photo: Sara S. Wallach/courtesy Savor] A lions mane mushroom steak cooked in the butter was meaty, juicy, and comforting, and the Savor butter even appeared in the cherry gastrique atop the mushroom, giving it a silky depth. The chocolate tart had a dense but flaky crust, with Savor butter salted caramel and a melt-in-your-mouth ganache. [Photo: Sara S. Wallach/courtesy Savor] The meal was meant to show the variety of ways Savors butter can be used, fitting into chefs existing recipes and traditional cooking methods. It also marked Savors commercial launch. The startups first customers this year include Michelin-starred restaurants SingleThread and One65, and San Franciscos Jane the Bakery. Savor has been working with chefs over the past year to test its butter and collaborate on creations. (The company is focused on launching as an ingredient supplier first, rather than direct to consumers on grocery store shelves.) In a video on Savors website, pastry chef Juan Contreras of three-Michelin-starred restaurant Atelier Crenn, uses Savor butter to make a classic brioche, a recipe he says is inherently all about the butter. Its also a recipe the San Francisco restaurant took off its menu when it stopped serving dairy. Its gotten to the point now where its pretty much just like working with dairy-based butter, he says in the Savor video. If I got served that at a restaurant . . . I would think its just regular butter.
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E-Commerce
Thousands of tonnes of plastic pollution could be escaping into the environment every year . . . from our mouths. Most chewing gum on sale is made from a variety of oil-based synthetic rubberssimilar to the plastic material used in car tires. If you find that thought slightly unsettling, you are not alone. I have been researching and speaking about the plastic pollution problem for 15 years. The people I talk to are always surprised, and disgusted, when they find out theyve been chewing on a lump of malleable plastic. Most manufacturers just dont advertise what gum is actually made ofthey dodge around the detail by listing gum base in the ingredients. Theres no strict definition of synthetic gum base. Chewing gum brand, Wrigley Extra partners with dental professionals around the world to promote the use of sugar-free chewing gum to improve oral health. The brands Wrigley Oral Health Program states that: Gum base puts the “chew in chewing gum, binding all the ingredients together for a smooth, soft texture. We use synthetic gum base materials for a consistent and safe base that provides longer-lasting flavor, improved texture, and reduced tackiness. It almost sounds harmless. But chemical analysis shows that gum contains styrene-butadiene (the durable synthetic chemical used to make car tyres), polyethylene (the plastic used to make carrier bags and bottles) and polyvinyl acetate (woodglue) as well as some sweetener and flavoring. The chewing gum industry is big business, worth an estimated $48.68 billion (37.7 billion pounds) in 2025. Three companies own 75% of the market share, the largest of which is Wrigley, with an estimated 35%. There are few reliable statistics available about the amount of gum being produced, but one peer-reviewed global estimate states 1.74 trillion pieces are made per year. I examined several types of gum and found that the most common weight of an individual piece of gum is 1.4 gramsthat means that globally, a staggering 2.436 million tonnes of gum are produced each year. About a third (30%) of that weight, or just over 730,000 tonnes, is synthetic gum base. If the idea of chewing plastic isnt disturbing enough, consider what happens after you spit it out. Most people have experienced discarded gum under bench seats, school desks, and on street pavements. But, like other plastics, synthetic chewing gum does not biodegrade and can persist in the environment for many years. In the environment, it will harden, crack, and break down into microplastics but this can take decades. Cleaning it up is not cheap because it is labor intensive. The average cost is $1.94 (1.50 pounds) per square meter, and estimates suggest that the annual cleanup cost for chewing gum pollution for councils in the U.K. is around 7 million pounds (thats more than $9 million). There have been some efforts to address the problem. In many public locations around the U.K., gum collection pots supplied by Dutch company Gumdrop Ltd. have been installed to collect and recycle used gum. Signage provided by councils encouraging responsible disposal is also now a regular feature in some U.K. high streets, and there is a growing number of small producers offering plant-based alternatives. In the U.K., the environmental charity Keep Britain Tidy launched the chewing gum task force in 2021. This collaboration involves three major manufacturers who have committed to investing up to 10 million pounds in order to clean up “historic gum staining and changing behavior so that more people bin their gum. But, here lies the crux of the issue. The first objective implies that cleaning up gum is a solution to this form of plastic pollution; it isnt. Manufacturers making a financial contribution to cleanup efforts is like plastic manufacturers paying for litter pickers and bin bags at volunteer beach cleans. Neither addresses the root cause of the problem. Binning gum is not the solution either. Addressing gum as a plastic pollutant dictates that the prevention of gum pollution should include the well-known tenets, like all plastic pollution, of reduce, reuse, recycle and redesign. It is not only a disposal issue. Another issue that I have uncovered is definition. In the two annual reports published by the gum litter task force since its inception, there is no mention of the word pollution. The distinction between litter and pollution is important. By calling it chewing gum pollution, the narrative changes from an individual negligence issue to a corporate one. That places an onus for accountability on the producers rather than the consumers. Single-use solutions Like single-use plastic items, chewing gum pollution needs to be tackled from all angleseducation, reduction, alternatives, innovation, producer responsibility, and legislation. Educating people about the contents of gum and the environmental consequences those ingredients have will reduce consumption and encourage better disposal habits. More transparent labeling on packaging would empower shoppers to make informed choices. Stricter regulations can hold manufacturers to accounta levy tax on synthetic gum can help pay for clean ups. In turn, this would incentivize more investment in plant-based gums and other sustainable alternatives. We can all reduce the environmental consequences of this plastic pollution by kicking the gum habit, calling on councils to enforce stricter pollution penalties, and encouraging governments to put a tax levy on manufacturers to fund cleanups and force them to list the contents of gum base. Throwing away any non-disposable, inorganic products is unsustainable. Chewing gum pollution is just another form of plastic pollution. Its time we start treating it as such. David Jones is a sessional teaching fellow at the School of the Environment and Life Sciences at the University of Portsmouth. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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E-Commerce
After Chobani owner and CEO Hamdi Ulukaya and his wife welcomed a baby in late 2015, he started to wonder whether his company was fully supporting its employees as they became parents. When he returned to work, he inquired about the companys parental leave policy. I asked, what happens at Chobani when someone has a baby or a new member of their families? Ulukaya recalled. The response was: We don’t have [a policy]. We have disability insurance. That insurance in New York offers up to 75% coverage for six weeks, basically. And that’s what we offered for birthing parents. Ulukaya says he was shocked and immediately asked his team what they could do differently. That prompted a major change at Chobani: In 2016, the company started offering six weeks of fully paid leave for all full-time workersincluding those in its manufacturing facilitieswith the option of adding an additional six weeks at partial pay. Chobani’s new parental leave policy The company found that many birthing parents would take the full 12 weeks of leave, with some workers even tacking on an additional six weeks through short-term disability. As of this week, Chobani is expanding its leave policy further by offering 12 weeks of fully paid leave for all new parents, including those who are fostering or adopting a child. Birthing parents will have access to a total of 18 weeks paid leave, since Chobani will also cover six weeks of short-term-disability leave at 100% pay for any reasonand the new policies will apply to all full-time and part-time employees who work at least 24 hours per week. Anything you do [for] your employeesanythingis an investment, Ulukaya says. It comes back 100% from my experience . . . People know that Chobani has been present on all kinds of social issues, but we start with our own people first. Investing in your people, recognizing the needs of your people, and being there with your people, especially frontline and factory [workers], is really the competitive advantage. “This is good for business” Chobani has long been known for its progressive workplace policies, from hiring refugees and paying competitive wages to giving its employees a stake in the companys future through an equity-sharing program. Even so, the parental leave policy has been one of the most popular benefits offered by Chobani, according to Ulukayaand it has also helped the company attract new talent. A lot of people come in and say, ‘I just got married, or I’m planning on [starting] a family,’ he says. ’Learning about your parenting policy, it was really attractive to come and join you.’ It’s massively important for a lot of people. Its a message Ulukaya also passes along to his peers in the business world. I tell my colleagues and other CEOs: This is good for business, he says. It’s not just a handout. When you have policies like this, what it does to your company is magical. The new update to its leave policy also makes Chobani somewhat of an outlier in the manufacturing space. A 2023 survey by the Institute for Womens Policy Research found that a little more than half the respondents had some access to paid family leave. While a significant portion of people with young children (78%) reported having paid maternity leave, far fewer (46%) were entitled to paternity leave. More broadly, paid leave is still hard to come by at many workplaces in the country: As of 2024, only 31% of full-time employees and 14% of part-time employees had access to the benefit. “We could fix this” Some companies that offer more generous leave distinguish between corporate employees and hourly workersthough there are exceptions. Starbucks recently made a similar update to its policy, increasing paid leave for birthing parents to 18 weeks and 12 weeks for all other new parents. Amazon, on the other hand, provides 20 weeks of paid leave to all birthing parents (including hourly workers), though the company offers only six weeks of leave to other new parents or those who adopt. While there has been little progress on a federal paid leave policy since the pandemic, states have continued adopting legislation that has expanded coverage for many workers. Thirteen states and Washington, D.C., have now passed legislation that mandates paid leave. Still, most state laws only guarantee partial payand the onerous process of applying for leave stops many workers from taking advantage of those policies. Cultural norms also hold men back from taking leave, even when they’re entitled to do so. With the latest changes at Chobani, Ulukaya is hopeful that lawmakers and business leaders alike will take notice. We do a lot of things at Chobani [that] I don’t really see the value of talking about, he says. I talk about this because I’m hoping that this could impact other businesses and policy makers and society. It doesn’t matter who you are and what kind of view you have when it comes to politics. This is something [where] we can all unite, and we could really fix this.
Category:
E-Commerce
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