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.

From left to right: BI's Ben Bergman, Mercury's Dan Kang, Cribl's Zach Johnson and Vercel's Marten Abrahamsen. Photo Courtesy of CRV, Tyler Mussetter 2025-05-26T16:00:01Z Save Saved Read in app This story is available exclusively to Business Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading now. Have an account? CFOs of late-stage tech startups face challenges amid market uncertainty and IPO jitters. Mercury, Vercel, and Cribl's CFOs spoke on a panel this week at VC firm CRV. Executives are hopeful that advances in AI can yield returns later this year. With a shaky IPO market, tariff uncertainty, and stock market jitters, these are not easy times to be the chief financial officer of a late-stage tech company.Against that precarious backdrop, I sat down last week with the CFOs of Mercury, Vercel, and Cribl at the San Francisco office of CRV, one of Silicon Valley's oldest venture firms and an early investor in all three startups."I'm expecting a lot more uncertainty," said Daniel Kang, CFO of Mercury, a fintech banking startup that recently doubled its valuation to $3.5 billion after raising $300 million in its latest funding round. "There's a lot of impact from what's happening in DC."All the turmoil means CFOs have to be more nimble, said Kang.Marten Abrahamsen, Vercel's CFO, was more upbeat. He does not expect a recession this year and predicts a stock market rally in the fall."I think a lot of this is going to be fueled by some of the investments we see in AI, and we're already seeing it for some of our products that weren't even here a year ago," said Abrahamsen. "I'm very, very bullish on the remainder of this year and beyond."After President Donald Trump announced sweeping tariffs on imports from other countries on April 2, investors panicked and companies from the payments lender Klarna to the physical therapy startup Hinge Health halted their IPO plans.The pause turned out to be short-lived.Markets have rebounded after Trump rolled back the most severe tariffs and he said he would not fire Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. Bankers are telling companies to go public while the window is open.This week, Hinge Health shares jumped 17% in its market debut after eToro, an Israeli trading platform, made a successful public debut on the Nasdaq, opening 34% above its IPO price. (Klarna's IPO is still on hold after the company reported mounting losses.)Abrahamsen does not think companies should wait until a better market comes along to IPO; instead, they should focus on what they can control."There has been a fear of going public in Silicon Valley," he said. "Great companies can go public even if there's not a hot market out there. If you're an outstanding business, there's always going to be an opportunity."Asked why so few companies are going public, the panelists said companies do not want to deal with the headaches of being a public company when there is so much private financing available. There is also little pressure to IPO from investors and employees, according to Zachary Johnson, CFO of Cribl, a data management solutions startup that raised $319 million last year at a $3.5 billion valuation."They understand that we're trying to build something that's going to be generational," said Johnson. "When we think about how we want to build this company, it's really about focusing on that durability and sustainability of growth."Johnson is hopeful that advances in AI can make Cribl even more attractive to investors when it goes public. He recently tasked everyone on his executive team to come up with an AI initiative."There's some work to be done, but I'm optimistic that we can actually get some real returns on that by the end of this year," he said. "We're still in the early innings of AI."

Colorful Grid Painting by Piet Mondrian Fetches $47.6 Million at Auction While it went for well below the auction house’s estimate, “Composition With Large Red Plane, Bluish Gray, Yellow, Black and Blue” is now the Dutch artist’s third highest-selling work Lillian Ali - Staff Contributor May 16, 2025 2:23 p.m. Composition With Large Red Plane, Bluish Gray, Yellow, Black and Blue, Piet Mondrian, 1922 Christie's A 1922 painting by Piet Mondrian fetched $47.6 million at auction, becoming the Dutch artist’s third highest-selling work. Titled Composition With Large Red Plane, Bluish Gray, Yellow, Black and Blue, the artwork features Mondrian’s signature grid-like patterns and bright colors, including a large red square. Experts at Christie’s had expected it to sell for around $50 million. “Red always helps, simple as it is, because it’s a color people like,” Alex Rotter, Christie’s president, tells the Wall Street Journal’s Kelly Crow. If it had sparked a bidding war, it could have broken the artist’s auction record of $51 million, set by Composition No. II Composition No. II, Piet Mondrian, 1930 Alexi Rosenfeld / Getty Images However, the May 12 auction attracted only one bidder, who purchased the piece for $41 million (or $47.6 million with fees). “It’s a fantastic picture,” Hugo Nathan of the art advisory Beaumont Nathan tells Artnet’s Katya Kazakina. “But the market at those very high levels is quite tricky.” Born in the Netherlands in 1872, Mondrian began his artistic career by painting landscapes and Cubist works. However, he’s famous for the style he developed in the 1920s, when he was in his 40s and 50s. His best-known pieces feature clean lines, eye-popping colors and abstract canvases filled with geometric shapes. “While prevailing artistic trends in post-war Europe favored a return to figuration and classical ideals, Mondrian pursued his own unique form of pure abstraction—a groundbreaking and thoroughly modern approach to painting in service of the creation of a universal visual language,” Vanessa Fusco, head of Impressionist and modern art at Christie’s, says in a statement. Composition With Large Red Plane, Bluish Gray, Yellow, Black and Blue had belonged to Louise Riggio, the wife of Barnes & Noble founder Leonard Riggio. Christie’s secured the collection by offering the Riggio estate an undisclosed guarantee, promising a minimum price regardless of the auction’s success. To offset its own risk, Christie’s arranged for outside buyers to place pre-sale bids on certain lots. For that reason, many lots didn’t have “a bounce,” or more bidding following a first bid, Rotter tells Artnet. “We had to manage our risk portfolio,” Rotter says. “This is the art market in the real world.” One of those one-bid lots was the Mondrian composition, which appears to have been purchased by its guarantor. In total, the Riggio collection made $272 million, including fees. Without fees, though, the sale fell short of Christie’s $252 million estimate, according to the New York Times’ Zachary Small and Tim F. Schneider. Many of the guarantees placed lots below their estimated values. For example, Pablo Picasso’s Mère et Enfant (1922) sold for $6 million, though it was expected to fetch at least $9 million. Speaking to Artnet, art adviser Ralph DeLuca describes these “low-margin” third-party guarantees as “blood sport.” However, some experts think the Mondrian’s price tag was inflated to begin with. “Overpricing at the start was a deterrent with many collectors, despite the quality and rarity of the work,” art dealer Brett Gorvy tells the Times. Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.

The ninth edition of the Teaching with Digital Technology Awards, a student-elected program presented annually to faculty members at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology includes MIT Media Lab instructor Zachary Lieberman (Media Arts and Sciences).  He was joined this year by his colleagues Eran Egozy (Music and Theatre Arts), Christopher Noe (Management), Anthony Pennes (Electrical Engineering & Computer Science / Mechanical Engineering), Scott Sheffield (Mathematics), Shen Shen (Electrical Engineering & Computer Science), and Eric So (Management). Lieberman, the New York-based artist with past residencies at Eyebeam and the Barcelona Hangar Center, was honored for his deft integrations of digital technology into the classroom, joining other past recipients like Ben Fry and Alex Kilian. Outside of academia, clients such as the hit indie band OK GO are among his many arts and entertainment sector clients. Extruded blob digital artwork made using openFrameworks. Image courtesy Z...