There's no escaping the slop.

Jurassic World Rebirth’s opening scene is perhaps its strongest. In a flashback sequence set in an experimental dinosaur breeding facility, a carelessly discarded Snickers wrapper gets sucked into a pressure-sealed door, allowing the film’s mutated D

While IO Interactive may be heavily focused on its inaugural James Bond game, 2026’s 007 First Light, it’s still providing ambitious new levels and updates for Hitman: World of Assassination and its new science fiction action game MindsEye. To continue to build hype for First Light and IOI’s growing partnership with the James Bond brand, the latest World of Assassination level is a Bond crossover, as Hitman protagonist Agent 47 targets Le Chiffre, the main villain of the 2006 movie Casino Royale. Available through July 6, 2025, the Le Chiffre event in World of Assassination features actor Mads Mikkelsen reprising his fan-favorite Bond villain role, not only providing his likeness but voicing the character as he confronts the contract killer in France. Den of Geek attended the first-ever in-person IO Interactive Showcase, a partner event with Summer Game Fest held at The Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood. Mikkelsen and the developers shared insight on the surprise new World of Assassination level, with the level itself playable in its entirety to attendees on the Nintendo Switch 2 and PlayStation Portal. The developers also included an extended gameplay preview for MindsEye, ahead of its June 10 launch, while sharing some details about the techno-thriller. Matching his background from Casino Royale, Le Chiffre is a terrorist financier who manipulates the stock market by any means necessary to benefit himself and his clients. After an investment deal goes wrong, Le Chiffre tries to recoup a brutal client’s losses through a high-stakes poker game in France, with Agent 47 hired to assassinate the criminal mastermind on behalf of an unidentified backer. The level opens with 47 infiltrating a high society gala linked to the poker game, with the contract killer entering under his oft-used assumed name of Tobias Rieper, a facade that Le Chiffre immediately sees through. At the IO Interactive Showcase panel, Mikkelsen observed that the character of Le Chiffre is always one that he enjoyed and held a special place for him and his career. Reprising his villainous role also gave Mikkelsen the chance to reunite with longtime Agent 47 voice actor David Bateson since their ‘90s short film Tom Merritt, though both actors recorded their respective lines separately. Mikkelsen enjoyed that Le Chiffre’s appearance in World of Assassination gave him a more physical role than he had in Casino Royale, rather than largely placing him at a poker table. Of course, like most Hitman levels, there are multiple different ways that players can accomplish their main objective of killing Le Chiffre and escaping the premises. The game certainly gives players multiple avenues to confront the evil financier over a game of poker before closing in for the kill, but it’s by no means the only way to successfully assassinate him. We won’t give away how we ultimately pulled off the assassination, but rest assured that it took multiple tries, careful plotting, and with all the usual trial-and-error that comes from playing one of Hitman’s more difficult and immersively involved levels. Moving away from its more grounded action titles, IO Interactive also provided a deeper look at its new sci-fi game MindsEye, developed by Build a Rocket Boy. Set in the fictional Redrock City, the extended gameplay sneak peek at the showcase featured protagonist Adam Diaz fighting shadowy enemies in the futuristic city’s largely abandoned streets. While there were no hands-on demos at the showcase itself, the preview demonstrated Diaz using his abilities and equipment, including an accompanying drone, to navigate the city from a third-person perspective and use an array of weapons to dispatch those trying to hunt him down. MindsEye marks the first game published through IOI Partners, an initiative that has IOI publish games from smaller, external developers. The game did not have a hands-on demo at the showcase and, given its bug-heavy and poorly-received launch, this distinction is not particularly surprising. Build a Robot Boy has since pledged to support the game through June to fix its technical issues but, given the game’s hands-on access at the IOI Showcase, there were already red flags surrounding the game’s performance. With that in mind, most of the buzz at the showcase was unsurprisingly centered around 007 First Light and updates to Hitman: World of Assassination, and IO Interactive did not disappoint in that regard. Even with Hitman: World of Assassination over four years old now, the game continues to receive impressive post-release support from IO Interactive, both in bringing the title to the Nintendo Switch 2 and with additional DLC. At the showcase, IOI hinted at additional special levels for World of Assassintation with high-profile guest targets like Le Chiffre, without identifying who or if they’re also explicitly tied to the James Bond franchise. But with 007 First Light slated for its eagerly anticipated launch next year, it’s a safe bet that IOI has further plans to hype its own role in building out the James Bond legacy for the foreseeable future. The Hitman: World of Assassination special Le Chiffre level is available now through July 6, 2025 on all the game’s major platforms, including the Nintendo Switch 2. MindsEye is now on sale for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.

News Climate This paint ‘sweats’ to keep your house cool A new cement-based paint cools buildings by combining sunlight reflection and water evaporation A new cooling paint reflects sunlight and mimics sweat to reduce air-conditioning use. Marie LaFauci/Getty Images By Larissa G. Capella June 13, 2025 at 11:00 am A cool house without air conditioning may soon be possible. Scientists in Singapore have developed a new type of paint that reflects sunlight and cools surfaces by slowly evaporating water. Unlike other commercially available cooling paints, which are designed to repel water to protect the underlying material, the new one even works in hot, humid places, offering a low-energy way to stay cool, researchers report June 5 in Science. “The key is passive cooling,” which requires no energy input, says material scientist Li Hong In other words, it works without using electricity or mechanical systems. Right now, radiative cooling is the most common type of passive cooling used in materials, including certain paints. It works by reflecting sunlight and radiating heat from a surface such as walls or roofs, into the sky. But in humid places like Singapore, water vapor in the air traps heat near the surface, which prevents it from escaping into the atmosphere and keeps the surfaces warm. In response, Hong and two other material scientists from Nanyang Technological University developed a cement-based paint that combines three cooling strategies: radiative cooling, evaporative cooling, which our skin uses, and solar reflection. In the study, the scientists painted three small houses: one with regular white paint, one with commercial cooling paint that uses only radiative cooling and one with their new formula. After two years of sun and rain in Singapore, the first two paints had turned yellow. But “our paint was still white,” says coauthor Jipeng Fei. Unlike other colors, white helps materials maintain their high reflectivity and cooling performance. Sign up for our newsletter We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.

There’s a Sphere-alike in Redrock, MindsEye’s open-world version of Las Vegas. It’s pretty much a straight copy of the original: a huge soap bubble, half sunk into the desert floor, with its surface turned into a gigantic TV. Occasionally you’ll pull up near the Sphere while driving an electric vehicle made by Silva, the megacorp that controls this world. You’ll sometimes come to a stop just as an advert for an identical Silva EV plays out on the huge curved screen overhead. The doubling effect can be slightly vertigo-inducing.At these moments, I truly get what MindsEye is trying to do. You’re stuck in the ultimate company town, where oligarchs and other crooks run everything, and there’s no hope of escaping the ecosystem they’ve built. MindsEye gets this all across through a chance encounter, and in a way that’s both light of touch and clever. The rest of the game tends towards the heavy-handed and silly, but it’s nice to glimpse a few instances where everything clicks.With its Spheres and omnipresent EVs, MindsEye looks and sounds like the future. It’s concerned with AI and tech bros and the insidious creep of a corporate dystopia. You play as an amnesiac former-soldier who must work out the precise damage that technology has done to his humanity, while shooting people and robots and drones. And alongside the campaign itself, MindsEye also has a suite of tools for making your own game or levels and publishing them for fellow players. All of this has come from a studio founded by Leslie Benzies, whose production credits include the likes of GTA 5.AI overlords … MindsEye. Photograph: IOI PartnersWhat’s weird, then, is that MindsEye generally plays like the past. Put a finger to the air and the wind is blowing from somewhere around 2012. At heart, this is a roughly hewn cover shooter with an open world that you only really experience when you’re driving between missions. Its topical concerns mainly exist to justify double-crosses and car chases and shootouts, and to explain why you head into battle with a personal drone that can open doors for you and stun nearby enemies.It can be an uncanny experience, drifting back through the years to a time when many third-person games still featured unskippable cut-scenes and cover that could be awkward to unstick yourself from. I should add that there are plenty of reports at the moment of crashes and technical glitches and characters turning up without their faces in place. Playing on a relatively old PC, aside from one crash and a few amusing bugs, I’ve been mostly fine. I’ve just been playing a game that feels equally elderly.This is sometimes less of a criticism than it sounds. There is a definite pleasure to be had in simple run-and-gun missions where you shoot very similar looking people over and over again and pick a path between waypoints. The shooting often feels good, and while it’s a bit of a swizz to have to drive to and from each mission, the cars have a nice fishtaily looseness to them that can, at times, invoke the Valium-tinged glory of the Driver games. (The airborne craft are less fun because they have less character.)Driving between missions … MindsEye. Photograph: Build A Rocket Boy/IOI PartnersAnd for a game that has thought a lot about the point at which AI takes over, the in-game AI around me wasn’t in danger of taking over anything. When I handed over control of my car to the game while tailing an enemy, having been told I should try not to be spotted, the game made sure our bumpers kissed at every intersection. The streets of this particular open world are filled with amusingly unskilled AI drivers. I’d frequently arrive at traffic lights to be greeted by a recent pile-up, so delighted by the off-screen collisions that had scattered road cones and Dumpsters across my path that I almost always stopped to investigate.I even enjoyed the plot’s hokeyness, which features lines such as: “Your DNA has been altered since we last met!” Has it, though? Even so, I became increasingly aware that clever people had spent a good chunk of their working lives making this game. I don’t think they intended to cast me as what is in essence a Deliveroo bullet courier for an off-brand Elon Musk. Or to drop me into an open world that feels thin not because it lacks mission icons and fishing mini-games, but because it’s devoid of convincing human detail.I suspect the problem may actually be a thematically resonant one: a reckless kind of ambition. When I dropped into the level editor I found a tool that’s astonishingly rich and complex, but which also requires a lot of time and effort if you want to make anything really special in it. This is for the mega-fans, surely, the point-one percent. It must have taken serious time to build, and to do all that alongside a campaign (one that tries, at least, to vary things now and then with stealth, trailing and sniper sections) is the kind of endeavour that requires a real megacorp behind it.MindsEye is an oddity. For all its failings, I rarely disliked playing it, and yet it’s also difficult to sincerely recommend. Its ideas, its moment-to-moment action and narrative are so thinly conceived that it barely exists. And yet: I’m kind of happy that it does. MindsEye is out now; £54.99

Mario Kart World comes at you fast (Nintendo) After a dozen hours with the biggest game on Nintendo Switch 2, GameCentral tries to evaluate the surprisingly controversial new Mario Kart game. It’s very obvious why Mario Kart World is the main launch title for the Nintendo Switch 2: it’s been over a decade since the last one and Mario Kart 8 is one of the best-selling video games of all-time. Much of that success is due to the innate simplicity of the concept and the easy accessibility of its controls, so it’s surprising that Mario Kart World has been so difficult for people to get their heads around. We’ve played it three times now, for increasingly long lengths of time, the previous time being at a press event with a host of other journos. But now that we have a Nintendo Switch 2 of our own, we’ve been able to spend even longer exploring the game at our leisure and we’ve come to the conclusion that Nintendo’s marketing for the game is doing it a disservice. It emphasises the fact that the game has a massive open world but as soon as you start playing, it becomes obvious that the designers must consider that to be a relatively minor part of the game. Or at least the idea that you can roam around at will, looking for secrets. You can do that, but despite what we and many others assumed it’s very much a side activity. This is made obvious by the fact that the option to free roam is not part of the main menu for the game, instead there’s an easily missed prompt to press the ‘+’ button and explore the open world at will. This is a lot of fun, because the open world is phenomenally well designed – full of secret pathways and tempting scenery to jump off and grind on – but what’s putting people off is there’s very little structured gameplay for it. There are a variety of objects to look out for – such as P-switches, ? panels, and special medallions – but all they do is unlock small stickers you can customise your vehicle with. The P-switches activate missions, which are the most complex activity, but most of the time they involve simply collecting blue coins or competing in a mini-race. There are a few more unusual examples but most barely last 60 seconds, when you beat them, and that’s as complicated as the open world gameplay ever gets. It is enjoyable, and we’ve spent many happy hours already searching for secrets, but there’s no question that the open world feels underutilised – an afterthought almost. Expert, exclusive gaming analysis Sign up to the GameCentral newsletter for a unique take on the week in gaming, alongside the latest reviews and more. Delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning. Although other AI racers can occasionally be seen driving around you can’t interact with them, there’s no story or dialogue, and no complex mission scenarios. What’s more, you can’t meet random online players in the open world and even if you invite friends all you can do is take photos with them. You can choose to start one of the other modes from within the open world but we’re very surprised that you can’t set up your own point-to-point races (which would surely have been perfect for the mouse controls of the new Joy-Cons). Instead, all you can do is create a custom Grand Prix by choosing which track to go to once each one ends. We point all this out because these details weren’t clear beforehand and because it’s almost certainly going to be the main complaint against the game. But while it is certainly a missed opportunity, it doesn’t negatively affect the actual focus of the game. It seems that the ability to free roam is intended as essentially a bonus. The real changes to the game are in terms of the nature of the tracks, which rather than being a succession of completely unconnected circuits all flow from one to another. Often they’re not circuits at all, but linear races from one point to another, as you work your way across the world map. Since they’re all in the same corner of the world, a Grand Prix often has a consistent theme, such as snowy or desert levels, and specific elements, like dinosaurs or boos, can appear at the beginning and end of adjoining tracks, reinforcing the impression that it’s all one giant race (these sections are removed for Time Trials). The graphics are very impressive (Nintendo) That concept seems to have come first and the open world followed, even though technically it’s not needed – or at least not to the level of detail that Nintendo has gone with. But either way, the courses in Mario Kart World are excellent, with wildly different designs even for returning tracks. The new ones are especially good though, with Boo Cinema, where you travel through the screen and into the film itself, being our current favourite. Although the ones with Wave Race 64 style water physics are also all uniformly excellent. The action may seem similar in video clips but it’s really quite different to Mario Kart 8. And not just because of the wider roads, new enemies, and the fact that there’s now 24 racers on every track. There’s now far more shortcuts and alternate routes, which seems like it should end up making races feel disjointed and unbalanced but it doesn’t, thanks to the levelling effect of items and the fact that sooner or later everyone is still being funnelled down the same path. The abundance of point-to-point races is a significant change to the Mario Kart norm and not only does it spice up Grand Prix mode but it allows for the superb Knockout Tour. This is a far more significant addition than free roam, even though it’s a simple sudden death mode, where you have to reach a certain position by the end of a track or you’re out of the game. In Grand Prix you can try and make up for a bad performance in the next race but with Knockout the tension is sky high throughout, and it works brilliantly, especially online. When we started playing the game, on Wednesday afternoon, there were only a handful online, but over the course of Thursday morning the matches became full and everything came alive. Playing against 23 other humans also helps to emphasise the fact that while Mario Kart World does make certain things easier – like automatically holding items behind you as a shield or allowing for a little more leeway when escaping shells – this is absolutely still a game of skill. Playing online, we could see the same names consistently doing well and ourselves… enjoying the mid-table mediocrity that we usually do, when faced with talented opposition. Not that that ever put us off. On the contrary, we spent almost every match grinning inanely at the sheer Mario Kart-ness of it all. We will still need to play more to do a full review though – we haven’t played a lot on 150cc yet and we only got an hour or two with the online. However, at this point we do feel we’ve seen the basics of what the game is. More Trending It’s a strange one to be sure, in what is usually one of Nintendo’s most straightforward franchises, but while anyone can look at the open world and think of a dozen other things that could’ve been done with it, the actual racing is top notch. Mechanically it’s not significantly different from Mario Kart 8 but then the series is not a very malleable one, and this does as much as it can to mix things up – and all without resorting to gimmicks. In terms of a score, we’re not looking at a 10/10. Mario Kart World is many things but it’s not perfect, not like Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. We’ll have to spend more time with it to determine if it suits an 8 or 9/10 but longevity has never been a problem for the series, so we imagine it’ll be the higher of the two. Given how late Nintendo was in sending out consoles that’s all we can say for now but while this is not quite the game many will have been expecting, and it does leave a lot on the table (possibly to be picked up by DLC, but naturally Nintendo isn’t saying), it’s still an excellent game and a great introduction to the Switch 2. Formats: Nintendo Switch 2Price: £74.99 (physical) or £66.99 (digital)Publisher: NintendoDeveloper: Nintendo EPDRelease Date: 5th June 2025Age Rating: 3 There’s unlockable costumes for all the named characters (Nintendo) Email gamecentral@metro.co.uk, leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter. To submit Inbox letters and Reader’s Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here. For more stories like this, check our Gaming page. GameCentral Sign up for exclusive analysis, latest releases, and bonus community content. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. 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We may earn a commission from links on this page.While most people think of smart cameras as just a part of their security system, they’re also a good way to monitor the things growing in your yard. In most cases, the cameras you already have set up for security can be doing double duty as a tool to keep track of what's happening in your garden.I believe we’re on the cusp of smart cameras becoming a much bigger part of the gardening experience. For the last few years, smart bird houses have exploded in popularity. One of those companies, Bird Buddy, has launched an entirely new line of cameras specifically for micro-viewing experiences in the garden. Their Petal cameras, expected to be available next year, should be positioned closer to the ground than most security cameras, and are meant to capture bees, insects, and butterflies, as well as the growth of your plants. Using AI (as a subscription service), the camera will allow you to assign names to your plants and even communicate with them. Still, there is a lot you can do with security cameras already on the market. Remote monitoring Credit: Amanda Blum In an ideal world, you could pack up for vacation and your yard would take care of itself—but a smart camera can allow you to remotely keep an eye on what’s happening and monitor for any damage. What’s impressive to me is how well my solar-powered cameras maintain their connection, even during low temperatures and freezing rain.  I've been impressed at how much detail I can get from small plants through my cameras. Credit: Amanda Blum Cameras allow you to keep an active watch on your yard. Not only will your security camera let you know if your trusted waterer drops by while you're gone as promised, but you can actually see how your plants are doing and if additional help is needed.  I’m always impressed at how good the zoom is on the cameras I use around my yard; I can actually tell if a tomato is ripe or if broccoli is ready to be picked. Last year, when I couldn’t get outside because of a sprained ankle and had someone helping in the garden, being able to see what they were doing and communicate with them via my security camera was invaluable. It’s much more effective than trying to describe what you need or want. Catch pestsGarden pests are frustrating for a wealth of reasons. To start with, you often don’t know what kind of pest you’re dealing with, and it’s nearly impossible to catch them in the act. Smart cameras are perfect for this, because they give you fly-on-the-wall ability to passively watch. Motion detection does most of the work for you. My security camera let me know I had raccoons in my yard last winter. They weren’t doing any damage (yet), but it helped influence how I design my garden and chicken coops. The cameras identified the cat that had chosen my garden to use as a litter box, checking in each night around 1 a.m. I’ve been chasing down a rat for the last two weeks, and the cameras do a spectacular job of catching his activity, which tells me where to add traps and what I may be doing that is enabling him. Other uses for smart cameras in your yard Credit: Amanda Blum The most invaluable service I’ve gotten from my cameras are how I use them to monitor backyard pets. I could not figure out how my newly adopted doberman was escaping from the yard, so I installed security cameras, and discovered she was climbing a five-foot tall chain link fence. I’ve got three cameras installed in my chicken coop, and they tell me when there are eggs to be grabbed, if a chicken is becoming broody, if everyone got into the coop at night, and if that pesky rat has cracked into the chicken food. When I first got my chickens, I couldn’t figure out which bird was laying which color egg, but the cameras helped. And now that I have a beehive, being able to see the activity going in and out of the hive is a helpful to monitor the health of the hive, and if a rodent of any kind tries to get in, I’ll know immediately. How to choose a camera for your yardI’ve tried smart cameras from almost every major brand, and I’ve figured out some things. First, in almost all cases, I want a PTZ (point, tilt, zoom) camera. These allow you to use your phone as a remote control and move the camera around, often almost 360 degrees, to zoom in on what you want. This is far superior to a fixed range camera. It’s simply annoying to have something going on just outside of the range of your camera and not be able to do anything to adjust it remotely. Additionally, I look for an app that makes it easy to watch clips. While I think Reolink cameras are affordable and functional, their app forces you to watch a horizontal clip on a vertical screen, so details are incredibly small. The Ring app has a lot of bloat, bringing neighborhood alert notifications to your phone. I enjoy the Aqara, Switchbot, and Eufy apps for getting to the video quickly and easily. Lastly, as you add cameras to your collection, being able to remain free from subscription costs is a real bonus. For that reason, I have largely switched over to Eufy cameras, which—if connected to a Home Base—don’t need a subscription. What I use in my yard: I replaced all my floodlights with this camera for overhead views Eufy Wired Floodlight Cam $199.99 at Amazon $219.99 Save $20.00 Shop Now Shop Now $199.99 at Amazon $219.99 Save $20.00 I place these wireless cams anyplace I want a 360 view of what's happening in my yard. Eufy Solar Powered Wireless Camera $259.99 at Amazon $349.99 Save $90.00 Shop Now Shop Now $259.99 at Amazon $349.99 Save $90.00 I have this epoxied into three spots in my chicken coop. Eufy Indoor PTZ Camera $34.88 at Amazon Shop Now Shop Now $34.88 at Amazon Just added this to monitor my beehive. Eufycam S3 Pro $439.99 at Amazon $549.99 Save $110.00 Get Deal Get Deal $439.99 at Amazon $549.99 Save $110.00 All my cameras sync to the homebase so I don't need a subscription. Eufy HomeBase $149.99 at Amazon Get Deal Get Deal $149.99 at Amazon SEE 2 MORE Where to place your camera Credit: Amanda Blum All security cameras are either hardwired or wireless. You might already have exterior floodlights on your home, and wired security cameras can use those connections, replacing the lights (many units come with floodlights). In this case, your connection is likely high up, and can’t be moved easily. So long as it’s high up, you likely have a good field of vision of your yard, but make sure to consider plants that grow in the summer, and if they’ll block your view. If you don’t have these connections available and don’t want to pay an electrician to create them, you need wireless cameras. But I actually prefer my wireless cameras. First, the solar power on most of them is astounding. I live in the Pacific Northwest, a place with seven months of gloom, and my cameras always stay powered. Second, being wireless means you can move your camera around to find the perfect spot. Usually all you need is to screw the base into the spot you want the camera. Don’t be afraid to try different spots, when I was chasing down how my dog escaped, I had to keep moving the camera. I attached the camera to a 2x4, and moved the wood around the yard, leaning it against whatever was near until I found the right range of vision. 

Remember the banana peels, apple cores, and leftover pizza you recently threw in the garbage? Today, your food waste—and your neighbors’—is emitting climate-warming greenhouse gases as it decomposes in a nearby municipal landfill. Buried food scraps and yard waste at 51 dumps across Colorado generate an amount of methane equivalent to driving 1 million gasoline-powered cars for a year. About 80 times as potent as carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas over a period of 20 years, methane accounts for 11% of global emissions that scientists say are warming the atmosphere and contributing to more intense and severe weather, wildfires, and drought. Landfills are the third-largest source of methane pollution in Colorado, after agriculture and fossil fuel extraction. Draft methane rules released last month by the state’s Department of Public Health and Environment would, for the first time, require some dump operators to measure and quantify methane releases and to fix leaks. The proposal mandates that waste managers install a gas collection system if their dump generates a certain amount of the climate-warming gas.  It also addresses loopholes in federal law that allow waste to sit for five years before such systems are required—even though science has shown that half of all food waste decays within about three and a half years. The draft rule surpasses U.S. Environmental Protection Agency standards in the amount of landfill area operators must monitor for emissions. It’s set to be heard by the state’s Air Quality Control Commission in August. Proposed regulations require the elimination of open gas flares—burning emissions directly into the atmosphere—and urge the use of biocovers and biofilters, which rely on bacteria to break down gases. The 70-page draft also calls for more routine and thorough monitoring of a dump surface with advanced technologies like satellites, which recently recorded large plumes of methane escaping from a Denver-area landfill. “We’ve had our eyes opened thanks to technology that has made the invisible, visible—now we know the extent of the problem, which is much greater than what estimates have portrayed,” said Katherine Blauvelt, circular economy director at Industrious Labs, a nonprofit working to decarbonize industry.  “When landfill operators fail to control leaks, we know harmful pollutants are coming along for the ride.” Cancer-causing volatile organic compounds, such as benzene and toluene, escape with methane leaching from landfills. These chemicals also contribute to the formation of lung-damaging ozone pollution, an increasing problem for the 3.6 million people who live in the greater Denver metropolitan area. Indeed, the region along the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains ranked sixth in the nation for the most polluted air—with unhealthy ozone levels reported on one out of every 10 days, on average, according to the American Lung Association’s 2025 “State of the Air” report. The state is also woefully behind in its compliance with federal air quality standards. State officials and environmental advocates agree that reducing methane emissions from landfills, which are easier to mitigate than cow burps, for example, is one of the quickest and most efficient ways to slow warming in the short term. “Waste deposited in landfills continues producing methane for decades as it breaks down—and it’s one sector where Colorado has yet to directly take action to reduce these greenhouse gases,” said Tim Taylor, a supervisor in the state’s air pollution control division, in an online hearing last February on the proposed landfill methane rules. Colorado’s draft regulations are similar to those in California, Oregon, Maryland, and Washington, he added. More than 10 landfills in the state are already required under federal rules to have gas collection and control systems. Yet even with such technology in place, disposal facilities routinely exceed federal methane emissions caps. The state’s health department has also identified a dozen municipal solid waste landfills, based on a preliminary analysis, that would be required to put such systems in place under the proposed rules, Zachary Aedo, an agency spokesman, said in an email to Capital & Main. Many of these facilities are operated by counties, some of which expressed concerns about their ability to pay for such systems. “We are a small rural county, and a multimillion-dollar containment system is going to be more than we can build,” testified Delta County Commissioner Craig Fuller at the February hearing. “The financial equation of this whole thing is absolutely mind-boggling—we are struggling as it is to provide health and human services.” Other county officials embraced the proposed tightening of rules. “Landfills across Colorado, including in Eagle County, are leading sources of methane pollution,” said Eagle County Commissioner Matt Scherr in a March 6 statement. “As a local elected official I support a robust rule that embraces advanced technologies to cut pollution, protect public health and help the methane mitigation industry thrive.” For larger landfill companies, like Waste Management, which operates 283 active disposal sites nationwide, figuring out which technology works to best monitor emissions from a dump’s surface is proving a complex challenge. The company is testing technologies at facilities with different topographies and climate fluctuations to understand what causes emissions releases, said Amy Banister, Waste Management senior director of air programs. “Landfills are complicated, emissions vary over time, and we have emissions 24/7,” said Banister at an online meeting last September of a technical group created by Colorado health department officials. “Drones produced a lot of false positives—and we need more work understanding how fixed sensors can be applied in a landfill environment.” State health officials suggested municipalities could offset the costs of installing gas collection systems at disposal sites by converting methane into energy. Several landfill operations in Colorado currently have such waste-to-energy systems—which send power they generate to the state’s power grid. “We are mindful of the costs of complying with this rule and how tipping fees may be impacted,” said Taylor, an air quality supervisor, at the February hearing. “Analyses conducted in other states of their landfill methane rules found there wasn’t an increase in tipping fees as a result of regulations over time.” Tipping fees are paid by those who dispose of waste in a landfill. If operators passed on compliance costs to households, a state analysis found, the yearly average annual fee would increase $22.90 per household. Colorado’s push comes as the EPA issued an enforcement alert in September that found “recurring Clean Air Act compliance issues” at municipal solid waste landfills that led to the “significant release of methane,” based on 100 inspections conducted over three years.  Such violations included improper design and installation of gas collection and control systems, failure to maintain adequate “cover integrity,” and improper monitoring of facilities for emissions. To address gaps in federal regulations, which require operators to measure emissions four times a year by walking in a grid pattern across the face of the landfill with a handheld sensor, Colorado’s draft rules require third-party monitoring. Such measurements must be conducted offsite by an entity approved by the state’s air pollution control division that uses a satellite, aircraft or mobile monitoring platform. The infrequency of such grid walks—which skip spots that operators deem dangerous—contributes to the undercounting of methane emissions from landfills, according to a satellite-based analysis. An international team of scientists estimated potent greenhouse gas emissions from landfills are 50% higher than EPA estimates. Satellites like one operated by nonprofit Carbon Mapper found large methane plumes outside the quarterly monitoring periods over the Tower Landfill in Commerce City, northeast of Denver. The satellite allowed scientists to see parts of the landfill not accessible with traditional monitoring—measurements that found that such landfills are underreporting their methane emissions to state regulators, said Tia Scarpelli, a research scientist and waste sector lead at Carbon Mapper. “Landfill emissions tend to be quite persistent—if a landfill is emitting when it’s first observed, it’s likely to be emitting later on,” she added. Scarpelli cautioned that it’s important for regulators to investigate with operators what was happening on the landfill surface at the time the leak was measured. Tower Landfill’s operator, Allied Waste Systems of Colorado, provided reasons for such large methane releases in a January 2024 report to the state’s health department, including equipment malfunctions. The fix for about 22 emissions events over the federal methane limits detected in August 2023 by surface monitoring: “Soil added as cover maintenance.” Like many dumps across Colorado and the nation, the Tower Landfill is located near a community that’s already disproportionately impacted by emissions from industrial activities. “These landfills are not only driving climate change, they are also driving a public health crisis in our community,” said Guadalupe Solis, director of environmental justice programs at Cultivando, a nonprofit led by Latina and Indigenous women in northern Denver. “The Tower Landfill is near nursing homes, clinics, near schools with majority Hispanic students.” Physicians in the state warned that those who live the closest to dumps suffer the worst health effects from pollutants like benzene and hydrogen sulfide, which are linked to cancer, heart, and other health conditions. “People living near landfills, like myself, my family and my patients, experience higher exposure to air pollution,” testified Dr. Nikita Habermehl, a specialist in pediatric emergency medicine who lives near a landfill in Larimer County, at the February 26 public hearing, “leading to increased rates of respiratory issues and headaches and asthma worsened by poor air quality.” —By Jennifer Oldham, Capital & Main This piece was originally published by Capital & Main, which reports from California on economic, political, and social issues.