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Managing ‘Brown Gold:’ the Challenges—and Opportunities—of Spent Substrate

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Tuesday, March 19, 2024

A version of this article originally appeared in The Deep Dish, our members-only newsletter. Become a member today and get the next issue directly in your inbox. Collar City Mushrooms occupies a small building along the post-industrial waterfront of Troy, New York. Out back, baking in the winter sun between a shed and a yellow Volkswagen bus, sits a waist-high heap of what looks like dozens of giant Frosted Mini-Wheats, each roughly the size of a cinder block. The weathered caps of oyster mushrooms sprout defiantly from various points in the pile. The lumpy blocks are spent substrate, the living material left over after growing mushrooms. Composed of sawdust and soy pellets woven through with mycelium—the thread-like aspect of the fungus from which mushrooms sprout—spent substrate is a unique kind of waste. It’s also one with many potential uses; it can be used as compost, as a means of decontaminating soil, as biofuel, and simply for growing more mushrooms. And while each of those uses could provide revenue potential for mushroom farms, the expanding piles of spent substrate also represent a mounting logistical challenge. “If you’re gonna do it, awesome, but account for this waste stream you’re producing and how you’re gonna get it off of your property.” “Right now, we have people picking it up almost as a favor for us, because otherwise what are we doing with it?” said Avery Stempel, Collar City’s co-founder, as we gazed upon the pile. Stempel currently takes most of the material to a nearby compost facility, but local farms, gardeners, and florists also take a portion. So do individuals, whether for compost in their gardens or just to grow mushrooms at home. “People will come and buy a bucket for five bucks,” Stempel said. Before it’s put to work growing mushrooms, substrate is carefully mixed and sterilized to maximize efficiency and prevent competition for the fungus. Protected inside breathable plastic bags, the sawdust and soy hulls are inoculated with an edible mushroom strain, then stacked on racks in climate-controlled rooms. The bags are sliced open when the mycelium is ready, and out sprouts the first “flush” of mushrooms. To make the best use of space, many farms will dispose of the blocks after a single flush, but each block is capable of several rounds of mushroom production. In this sense, the substrate isn’t really “spent.” Spent substrate waiting to be collected and reused. (Photo courtesy of Central Texas Mycological Society) Collar City is a relatively small operation, producing up to 1,000 pounds of mushrooms a week. An hour south, in Hillsdale, New York, Tivoli Mushrooms produces around 20,000 pounds per week, and it’s currently only using half the capacity of its new 15,000-square-foot facility. Soon after moving in, Co-founder Devon Gilroy reached out to a neighboring organic farm, offering the spent substrate for free as compost if they would simply take it off his hands. It wasn’t a tough sell. “They showed up like two weeks later with a tractor and a big truck to load it in,” he said. “They insisted on paying us for the substrate, which really helped.” More Mushrooms, More Problems From a revenue perspective, specialty mushroom substrate’s greatest value is currently as compost, which can sell for around $150 per cubic yard. It has a low pH level, useful in soils with low acidity, and a carbon-to-nitrogen ratio of roughly 40 to 1, which is close to ideal for building healthy soil. Spent substrate is also a useful addition to vermicompost—worms love to eat mycelium, and in doing, so they also break down woody debris and support soil biodiversity. It is also an excellent addition for structure and water retention. But that doesn’t mean every mushroom farm has an easy time finding a second life for its spent substrate, and the quandary of how to make use of the material is growing along with the scale of the specialty mushroom industry. “If you’re gonna do it, awesome, but account for this waste stream you’re producing and how you’re gonna get it off of your property.” That’s the advice Amanda Janney, founder of KM Mushrooms in California, offers new farmers. Janney’s farm is about as modest as they come, operating out of her home in Santa Rosa. As the farm’s output quickly grew, from 20 pounds of mushrooms a week to around 300, the leftover material quickly became a logistical problem to be solved. “In the beginning when we were doing really low volume, it was not much of a consideration; giving bags of spent substrate out via Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace was sufficient,” said Janney. “Then production increased a lot faster than I had planned on, which is a great thing, but a big piece of it became connecting with farmers that were interested in [taking substrate] and getting a workflow to move it off the property quickly.” In 2022, driven in large part by consumer interest in meat alternatives, global revenues for mushrooms were predicted to more than double to over $110 billion by 2030. The nutraceutical market for medicinal mushrooms—such as reishi, lion’s mane, and cordyceps—may follow a similar trajectory, with one forecast suggesting the market could triple to reach $62 billion by 2032. The vast majority—95 percent—of the mushroom production in the U.S. is in Agaricus: the common cremini, button, or portobello (all the same species). Every other variety, be it shiitake or oyster, falls in the specialty mushroom category. In the U.S., Agaricus mushrooms are produced in vast quantities by well-established farms, often generations old and mostly located in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania. Grown in a combination of manure and straw, they produce a distinct kind of spent substrate that is also used as compost, though it is a very different material from specialty mushroom substrate, with fewer applications. To farm button mushrooms cost-effectively is very labor- and space-intensive, and to take up producing them at small scales doesn’t make a lot of economic sense. “It’s a huge opportunity on a spreadsheet, but on the operational side, it’s like, ‘Get this stuff out of here right now.’” By comparison, it is relatively easy to grow enough oyster mushrooms to sell at market for more than $10 per pound, compared to around $5 per pound for button mushrooms. It’s also easy to buy a few ready-to-grow kits for home growers. For these and other reasons, specialty mushrooms are what most small and emerging farms are likely to grow. Sales of specialty mushrooms increased 32 percent between 2021 and 2022 alone, which means an equivalent increase in spent substrate, and more questions about what to do with it. On the extreme end of substrate volume are the emerging mycelium materials companies, like MycoWorks and Ecovative. [Disclosure: The author worked for Ecovative in 2022 and 2023.] Based on oyster mushroom mycelium, Ecovative ships most of its substrate off as compost, and the possible uses it is exploring include selling part of the enormous output of leftover substrate to farms in Pennsylvania for a second act producing mushrooms. There’s a limit to that market, though: “To be frank, you couldn’t possibly eat enough oyster mushrooms in the U.S. to use all the substrate we’re going to make if we meet our goal,” said Ecovative CEO Eben Bayer. “It’s a huge opportunity on a spreadsheet, but on the operational side, it’s like, ‘Get this stuff out of here right now.’” A Community Solution to Substrate Waste Emerges in Texas Rather than relying solely on the market, the question of what to do with substrate is largely being answered by communities local to the specialty mushroom farms. In Austin, for instance, the Central Texas Mycological Society (CTMS) has organized a network of about two dozen locations for free spent substrate pickup. They report that some 9,000 people have signed up since the program started three years ago, with a surge during the pandemic, when interest in homegrown mushrooms took off dramatically. “With spent mushroom substrate, we saw this opportunity to keep people connected,” said Angel Schatz, a lead organizer of the CTMS, whose front yard was the original drop-off point for the program. What people do with the material, though, is their own business. “I know a lot of people are growing the mushrooms, getting a second flush out of the bags, but we don’t want to steal the thunder from the commercial farms in any way, so we start first with teaching people the composting methods.” Photo courtesy of Central Texas Mycological Society Until recently, a significant amount of spent substrate for the CTMS pickup program came from Smallhold, which quickly became a prominent specialty mushroom grower over the last five years, before declaring bankruptcy in early February. With facilities in Los Angeles, Austin, and New York, the company’s objective was to grow specialty mushrooms near major cities. Each of its three large farms generated about 80 to 100 cubic yards of spent substrate per week, and the company employed a team dedicated to finding productive uses for the material. “At the end of the day, this is a valuable material,” said Travis Breihan, who was the company’s impact manager in charge of researching uses for spent substrate. “But it is a new material on the scene, and it’s not like there was an established industry of people second-flushing blocks, or using it as a garden amendment, or even a larger-scale farm amendment. So, I think it’s early in the world of adoption, but all signs are very strong that it’s a great area of focus for the mushroom industry overall.” CTMS isn’t concerned about losing the Smallhold substrate. “We still work with another farm that produces around 1,900 spent substrate blocks a week, and they will probably grow now because Smallhold won’t be here. Meanwhile, besides giving away blocks, CTMS is working with local farms, food producers, and environmental remediation projects that utilize the material for cleanup of contaminated sites, such as the Circle Acres nature preserve on the edge of Austin. Given the limitations that scale creates for transporting and productively using spent substrate, any future market for the material may indeed be shaped most by smaller operations. Specialty mushrooms lend themselves to this dynamic. They don’t ship well over long distances, and can run on the waste streams—such as sawdust—of nearby industries. It can take many different shapes and, crucially, sizes. As the specialty mushroom industry grows, spent substrate may find a market for secondary mushroom production, or for building and remediating soil and waterways. The potential of the material may best be realized in connecting mushroom production with other food- and soil-based initiatives, and in supporting more circular, regional economies. “The least we can do is make sure the cycle is complete, and put it back into the soil rather than a dump site,” said Schatz. The post Managing ‘Brown Gold:’ the Challenges—and Opportunities—of Spent Substrate appeared first on Civil Eats.

A version of this article originally appeared in The Deep Dish, our members-only newsletter. Become a member today and get the next issue directly in your inbox. The lumpy blocks are spent substrate, the living material left over after growing mushrooms. Composed of sawdust and soy pellets woven through with mycelium—the thread-like aspect of the fungus from which mushrooms sprout—spent […] The post Managing ‘Brown Gold:’ the Challenges—and Opportunities—of Spent Substrate appeared first on Civil Eats.

A version of this article originally appeared in The Deep Dish, our members-only newsletter. Become a member today and get the next issue directly in your inbox.

Collar City Mushrooms occupies a small building along the post-industrial waterfront of Troy, New York. Out back, baking in the winter sun between a shed and a yellow Volkswagen bus, sits a waist-high heap of what looks like dozens of giant Frosted Mini-Wheats, each roughly the size of a cinder block. The weathered caps of oyster mushrooms sprout defiantly from various points in the pile.

The lumpy blocks are spent substrate, the living material left over after growing mushrooms. Composed of sawdust and soy pellets woven through with mycelium—the thread-like aspect of the fungus from which mushrooms sprout—spent substrate is a unique kind of waste. It’s also one with many potential uses; it can be used as compost, as a means of decontaminating soil, as biofuel, and simply for growing more mushrooms. And while each of those uses could provide revenue potential for mushroom farms, the expanding piles of spent substrate also represent a mounting logistical challenge.

“If you’re gonna do it, awesome, but account for this waste stream you’re producing and how you’re gonna get it off of your property.”

“Right now, we have people picking it up almost as a favor for us, because otherwise what are we doing with it?” said Avery Stempel, Collar City’s co-founder, as we gazed upon the pile. Stempel currently takes most of the material to a nearby compost facility, but local farms, gardeners, and florists also take a portion. So do individuals, whether for compost in their gardens or just to grow mushrooms at home. “People will come and buy a bucket for five bucks,” Stempel said.

Before it’s put to work growing mushrooms, substrate is carefully mixed and sterilized to maximize efficiency and prevent competition for the fungus. Protected inside breathable plastic bags, the sawdust and soy hulls are inoculated with an edible mushroom strain, then stacked on racks in climate-controlled rooms. The bags are sliced open when the mycelium is ready, and out sprouts the first “flush” of mushrooms. To make the best use of space, many farms will dispose of the blocks after a single flush, but each block is capable of several rounds of mushroom production. In this sense, the substrate isn’t really “spent.”

Spent substrate waiting to be collected and reused. (Photo courtesy of Central Texas Mycological Society)

Collar City is a relatively small operation, producing up to 1,000 pounds of mushrooms a week. An hour south, in Hillsdale, New York, Tivoli Mushrooms produces around 20,000 pounds per week, and it’s currently only using half the capacity of its new 15,000-square-foot facility. Soon after moving in, Co-founder Devon Gilroy reached out to a neighboring organic farm, offering the spent substrate for free as compost if they would simply take it off his hands. It wasn’t a tough sell. “They showed up like two weeks later with a tractor and a big truck to load it in,” he said. “They insisted on paying us for the substrate, which really helped.”

More Mushrooms, More Problems

From a revenue perspective, specialty mushroom substrate’s greatest value is currently as compost, which can sell for around $150 per cubic yard. It has a low pH level, useful in soils with low acidity, and a carbon-to-nitrogen ratio of roughly 40 to 1, which is close to ideal for building healthy soil. Spent substrate is also a useful addition to vermicompost—worms love to eat mycelium, and in doing, so they also break down woody debris and support soil biodiversity. It is also an excellent addition for structure and water retention.

But that doesn’t mean every mushroom farm has an easy time finding a second life for its spent substrate, and the quandary of how to make use of the material is growing along with the scale of the specialty mushroom industry.

“If you’re gonna do it, awesome, but account for this waste stream you’re producing and how you’re gonna get it off of your property.” That’s the advice Amanda Janney, founder of KM Mushrooms in California, offers new farmers. Janney’s farm is about as modest as they come, operating out of her home in Santa Rosa. As the farm’s output quickly grew, from 20 pounds of mushrooms a week to around 300, the leftover material quickly became a logistical problem to be solved.

“In the beginning when we were doing really low volume, it was not much of a consideration; giving bags of spent substrate out via Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace was sufficient,” said Janney. “Then production increased a lot faster than I had planned on, which is a great thing, but a big piece of it became connecting with farmers that were interested in [taking substrate] and getting a workflow to move it off the property quickly.”

In 2022, driven in large part by consumer interest in meat alternatives, global revenues for mushrooms were predicted to more than double to over $110 billion by 2030. The nutraceutical market for medicinal mushrooms—such as reishi, lion’s mane, and cordyceps—may follow a similar trajectory, with one forecast suggesting the market could triple to reach $62 billion by 2032.

The vast majority—95 percent—of the mushroom production in the U.S. is in Agaricus: the common cremini, button, or portobello (all the same species). Every other variety, be it shiitake or oyster, falls in the specialty mushroom category.

In the U.S., Agaricus mushrooms are produced in vast quantities by well-established farms, often generations old and mostly located in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania. Grown in a combination of manure and straw, they produce a distinct kind of spent substrate that is also used as compost, though it is a very different material from specialty mushroom substrate, with fewer applications. To farm button mushrooms cost-effectively is very labor- and space-intensive, and to take up producing them at small scales doesn’t make a lot of economic sense.

“It’s a huge opportunity on a spreadsheet, but on the operational side, it’s like, ‘Get this stuff out of here right now.’”

By comparison, it is relatively easy to grow enough oyster mushrooms to sell at market for more than $10 per pound, compared to around $5 per pound for button mushrooms. It’s also easy to buy a few ready-to-grow kits for home growers. For these and other reasons, specialty mushrooms are what most small and emerging farms are likely to grow. Sales of specialty mushrooms increased 32 percent between 2021 and 2022 alone, which means an equivalent increase in spent substrate, and more questions about what to do with it.

On the extreme end of substrate volume are the emerging mycelium materials companies, like MycoWorks and Ecovative. [Disclosure: The author worked for Ecovative in 2022 and 2023.] Based on oyster mushroom mycelium, Ecovative ships most of its substrate off as compost, and the possible uses it is exploring include selling part of the enormous output of leftover substrate to farms in Pennsylvania for a second act producing mushrooms.

There’s a limit to that market, though: “To be frank, you couldn’t possibly eat enough oyster mushrooms in the U.S. to use all the substrate we’re going to make if we meet our goal,” said Ecovative CEO Eben Bayer. “It’s a huge opportunity on a spreadsheet, but on the operational side, it’s like, ‘Get this stuff out of here right now.’”

A Community Solution to Substrate Waste Emerges in Texas

Rather than relying solely on the market, the question of what to do with substrate is largely being answered by communities local to the specialty mushroom farms. In Austin, for instance, the Central Texas Mycological Society (CTMS) has organized a network of about two dozen locations for free spent substrate pickup. They report that some 9,000 people have signed up since the program started three years ago, with a surge during the pandemic, when interest in homegrown mushrooms took off dramatically.

“With spent mushroom substrate, we saw this opportunity to keep people connected,” said Angel Schatz, a lead organizer of the CTMS, whose front yard was the original drop-off point for the program. What people do with the material, though, is their own business. “I know a lot of people are growing the mushrooms, getting a second flush out of the bags, but we don’t want to steal the thunder from the commercial farms in any way, so we start first with teaching people the composting methods.”

Photo courtesy of Central Texas Mycological Society

Until recently, a significant amount of spent substrate for the CTMS pickup program came from Smallhold, which quickly became a prominent specialty mushroom grower over the last five years, before declaring bankruptcy in early February. With facilities in Los Angeles, Austin, and New York, the company’s objective was to grow specialty mushrooms near major cities. Each of its three large farms generated about 80 to 100 cubic yards of spent substrate per week, and the company employed a team dedicated to finding productive uses for the material.

“At the end of the day, this is a valuable material,” said Travis Breihan, who was the company’s impact manager in charge of researching uses for spent substrate. “But it is a new material on the scene, and it’s not like there was an established industry of people second-flushing blocks, or using it as a garden amendment, or even a larger-scale farm amendment. So, I think it’s early in the world of adoption, but all signs are very strong that it’s a great area of focus for the mushroom industry overall.”

CTMS isn’t concerned about losing the Smallhold substrate. “We still work with another farm that produces around 1,900 spent substrate blocks a week, and they will probably grow now because Smallhold won’t be here.

Meanwhile, besides giving away blocks, CTMS is working with local farms, food producers, and environmental remediation projects that utilize the material for cleanup of contaminated sites, such as the Circle Acres nature preserve on the edge of Austin.

Given the limitations that scale creates for transporting and productively using spent substrate, any future market for the material may indeed be shaped most by smaller operations. Specialty mushrooms lend themselves to this dynamic. They don’t ship well over long distances, and can run on the waste streams—such as sawdust—of nearby industries. It can take many different shapes and, crucially, sizes. As the specialty mushroom industry grows, spent substrate may find a market for secondary mushroom production, or for building and remediating soil and waterways. The potential of the material may best be realized in connecting mushroom production with other food- and soil-based initiatives, and in supporting more circular, regional economies.

“The least we can do is make sure the cycle is complete, and put it back into the soil rather than a dump site,” said Schatz.

The post Managing ‘Brown Gold:’ the Challenges—and Opportunities—of Spent Substrate appeared first on Civil Eats.

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For years, laundry detergents have focused their cleaning power on stain removal and getting whites white but now a new invisible enemy has emerged in the shape of the musty smell that clings to your gym gear.The shift to remote working has fuelled the popularity of “athleisure” clothing such as T-shirts, joggers and leggings which, rather than shirts and dresses, are now the default work wardrobe of many Britons.But less commuting means 70% of the clothing we stick in the drum have no visible stains, according to new research. Instead it is impregnated with invisible sweat, dust and smell-causing body oils, with the issue acute for “malodour-retaining” athleisure wear.Eduardo Campanella, the business group president at Unilever Home Care, which owns household names including Persil and Comfort, explains the source of the problem: “Athleisure wear is made from synthetic fibres which have been specifically constructed with a capillary action to wick away wetness from the body.”“In addition to this, synthetic fibres are more hydrophobic [oil-loving] which naturally hold on to body oil and body excretion. As a result, athleisure wear is more prone to malodour.”But because the clothes at least look clean and energy – and in some cases water – bills are so high, Britons want to get rid of any lingering smells but also want to use shorter wash cycles that are better for the environment.‘The Queen of Clean’, AKA Lynsey Crombie. Photograph: Linda Nylind/The GuardianIn response, Unilever has launched the Persil spin-off Wonder Wash which it says does the job in 15 minutes.With some hyperbole Unilever boasts that this new “15-minute laundry detergent”, with its 35 patents pending, will “create a new category of laundry products”.It comes at a time when, under pressure to improve their environmental credentials by removing harsh chemicals and working at lower temperatures, traditional washing powders and liquid-makers face competition from new eco products such as plastic-free washing “sheets” that are becoming a more common sight.The new cleaning elixir contains a blend of fast-acting ingredients, said Campanella, who in layperson’s terms explained the technology “binds to malodour molecules ensuring they don’t stick, as well as pulling the malodour molecules out”.While the company’s scientists used cutting-edge robotics and AI to come up with the formula for the smell-busting detergent, which sells for about £7 a bottle, there are DIY remedies. Store cupboard ingredients such as bicarbonate of soda and white vinegar are among the popular, cleaning hacks suggested.Lynsey Crombie, the TV cleaning expert and influencer known as the “Queen of Clean” uses the tried-and-tested method of pre-soaking gym kit in cold water and white vinegar before washing.skip past newsletter promotionSign up to Business TodayGet set for the working day – we'll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morningPrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotion“Sports clothing hangs on to sweat and if left in the laundry basket too long before washing can transfer on to other items”, she said. “If I could eliminate this process [pre-soaking] and save myself time, that would be great.”For many households, who still measure the time it takes to do a wash in hours not minutes, being able to get the washing done in 15 minutes is still a long way off.Shorter cycles of 30 to 60 minutes arrived more than a decade ago but more recently new machines with 15-minutewashes have gone on sale. But with the appliances replaced every seven to 12 years such high-speed washes will take a while to reach the mainstream.With extremely high standards as the Queen of Clean to maintain, Crombie says short cycles have their place and “clean everyday clothes well”. But, she adds: “Towels, underwear and bedding I still wash on a higher temperature on a longer cycle.”

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PGE rate hikes: Oregon regulators say they can’t dismiss increase request

The Oregon Public Utility Commission declined to dismiss Portland General Electric’s newest rate increase proposal, rejecting a motion filed by a state nonprofit group that advocates for utility customers.The decision Thursday means PGE’s proposed 7.5% increase will go through the regular lengthy rate-setting process.The increase likely would go into effect next January if approved – though the utility may file for other increases later this year.The Oregon Citizens’ Utility Board had asked the commission to throw out PGE’s rate request, saying people are reeling from record high bills. It’s the first time the board has made such a request.PGE increased rates for its electricity by 18% on Jan. 1 and 12% in January 2023.Under Oregon law, a regulated utility may file a proposal to change general rates at any time. Typically, the Public Utilities Commission conducts an investigation that can take up to a year to determine if rate changes are warranted. Various parties, including the Oregon Citizens’ Utility Board, participate in these cases.The Public Utilities Commission said it did not have the legal authority to dismiss the utility’s latest rate increase proposal.The commission also said throwing out a rate filing undermines the integrity of its rate-setting mechanism and commission deliberations.“A reactive decision could erode the value of the long-established, evidence-based process for consideration of requests for rate adjustments,” the commission said.Bob Jenks, executive director of the Citizens Utility Board, said his group was disappointed with the decision.“We think there is a big problem with PGE. It is operating under an ‘all of the above’ business model,” said Jenks, referring to PGE’s strategy to invest in an array of technologies from wind farms to battery storage to decarbonize its system and meet ambitious state mandates. Oregon requires PGE to reduce its carbon emissions by 80% by 2030 and by 100% by 2040.“Strategy involves identifying the best way to deploy your resources,” Jenks told The Oregonian/OregonLive. “It requires prioritization. PGE acts as if everything is an investment opportunity and their customers have unlimited wallets.”PGE spokesperson Drew Hanson said PGE “will continue to be fully engaged in the public rate review process administered by the Oregon Public Utility Commission.”The governor-appointed three-person Public Utilities Commission evaluates costs – such as operating and maintenance expenses, asset depreciation and cost of capital – and expected revenues, then determines rates that allow for “prudent and reasonable costs” to be recovered from customers, according to state law.Typically, said Jenks, the commission approves rates at a lower level than what utilities request. But, he added, PGE has filed multiple rate increase proposals in recent years for power costs, renewable energy projects, electric vehicles, wildfire mitigation, storm recovery and energy efficiency among others and they add up throughout the year.Rate changes usually go into effect in the middle of winter when energy costs are already high, so the increase hits harder, Jenks said.The public can comment on PGE’s latest increase proposal at a virtual event on May 16, via an online form or by emailing the commission at PUC.PublicComments@puc.oregon.gov. Comments must include the docket number, UE 435.— Gosia Wozniacka covers environmental justice, climate change, the clean energy transition and other environmental issues. Reach her at gwozniacka@oregonian.com or 971-421-3154.

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Climate

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“Little Home Market”: The Connecticut Company Accused of Fueling an Execution Spree

Evidence points to Absolute Standards as the source of a lethal drug the Trump administration used to restart federal executions after 17 years. The post “Little Home Market”: The Connecticut Company Accused of Fueling an Execution Spree appeared first on The Intercept.

The Intercept has uncovered new details about the small family business in Connecticut identified as having sold a lethal drug to the Federal Bureau of Prisons for use in the Trump administration’s unprecedented execution spree. Beginning in July 2020, the administration killed 13 people in the federal death chamber in Terre Haute, Indiana, over the course of six months. Absolute Standards Inc., located on the outskirts of New Haven, produces and sells materials used to calibrate laboratory and research instruments. The company is registered with Connecticut as a “manufacturer of drugs, cosmetics, and medical devices” and employed just 21 people in the lead-up to the executions, records show. John Criscio, the company’s owner, has denied that Absolute Standards played a role in supplying pentobarbital, a barbiturate used for lethal injection. But according to a source The Intercept interviewed last year, Criscio and the company’s director, Stephen Arpie, acknowledged in a meeting that Absolute Standards produced the active ingredient for pentobarbital for use in the federal executions. The person, who met with Criscio and Arpie about the possibility of obtaining lethal injection drugs, asked that their name be withheld because they were not authorized to speak about the interaction. A separate unnamed pharmacy then used the active ingredient, or API, to make an injectable drug that would stop prisoners’ hearts. “They went about explaining to us how they produce the chemical,” the person said of Criscio and Arpie. “They’d been reading about it in the papers. And they saw that people couldn’t get it. They were like, ‘Well, we make the standard, so we know how to make it. So we can just make it.’ They basically bragged about how they built this little home market.” A second person interviewed by The Intercept said they were also told by Arpie and Criscio that Absolute Standards made drugs for executions. Like many of the 27 states capable of carrying out death sentences, the federal government has fought to keep the identity of its supplier hidden from the public. Earlier this month, the comedy news program “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver” named Absolute Standards as the Bureau of Prisons’ drug supplier, citing an anonymous source. The segment echoed reporting by Reuters, which noted in 2020 that the House Oversight Committee had sent a letter to Absolute Standards suspecting the business was the source of the drugs. At the time, Arpie told Reuters that he did not always keep track of the final use of his products and couldn’t rule out involvement. Interviews conducted by The Intercept and documents obtained under public records laws bolster evidence that Absolute Standards, located in a state that abolished the death penalty in 2012, helped the Trump administration resume federal executions after a 17-year hiatus. A Connecticut congressional staffer raised concerns about the company’s role in the executions as early as April 2021, suggesting that states might be looking to follow the federal government’s lead. “As Absolute Standards has been identified as the only possible supplier of pentobarbital ingredients for executions,” the staffer warned, “the risk that Connecticut medicines will imminently fuel the death penalty in executing states across the country is high.” When asked about pentobarbital, Criscio told The Intercept, “We don’t make that material.” Arpie did not respond to multiple requests for comment, and the BOP declined to comment. The federal prison complex in Terre Haute, Ind., on Aug. 28, 2020. Photo: Michael Conroy/AP In August 2018, Absolute Standards applied to the Drug Enforcement Administration to become a bulk manufacturer of pentobarbital, according to a notice in the Federal Register. The designation allows for the production of chemicals “by means of chemical synthesis or by extraction from other substances.” A few months later, in October, the BOP received its first batch of the API for pentobarbital, according to a declaration by Raul Campos, then-associate warden of the BOP’s Federal Medical Center Carswell in Fort Worth, Texas. The declaration was submitted as part of litigation over the Trump administration’s lethal injection protocol. (The Intercept requested Absolute Standards’ applications to become a bulk manufacturer of pentobarbital in August 2023. On Monday, the DEA declined to hand over those records, stating that they were exempt from disclosure, in part because they included “information that is classified to protect national security.”) For years, pharmaceutical companies refused to sell pentobarbital for use in capital punishment, creating shortages that halted executions in some states that relied on the drug. Acquiring the API marked the end of a yearslong search for the BOP. “We were looking for the drugs domestically and internationally,” a former BOP official with knowledge of the situation told The Intercept last year. The official asked that their name be withheld because they were not authorized to speak about the procurement of execution drugs. “There were a number of leads that looked promising and then ended up being dry.” Read our complete coverage Out for Blood Eager to restart executions, the Trump administration had prioritized locating lethal drugs. But U.S. manufacturers did not want their products to be associated with killing people because they feared it would hurt their bottom line. “There’s such a lobby against the death penalty that any company who becomes identified as providing the drugs gets boycotted,” the BOP official said. “Those companies make more money from legitimate uses of the drug than they do from executions.” It was equally difficult to find drugs internationally, the official added, because of “shady characters” and issues confirming the legitimacy of suppliers. A team within the BOP general counsel’s office, led by then-general counsel Kenneth Hyle, was in charge of vetting potential suppliers. “More often than not, the companies they identified turned out to be nonviable,” the official said. Hyle did not respond to requests for comment. The former official did not remember how the BOP identified Absolute Standards but said there was a team of people calling suppliers off a list. “I know that we had people that were just calling every company that they could to find out if they were able and willing to produce it.” Only a small group of people knew the name of the API supplier, according to the official, who was only aware that it was a small company based in Connecticut. “I had no reason to ask for the name,” the official said. The API failed its first quality assurance test in October 2018, according to the declaration submitted by Campos. Another batch of the pentobarbital ingredient passed testing in February 2019 and was sent to a compounding pharmacy to be made into an injectable solution. The BOP has not revealed the identity of the compounding pharmacy. The former BOP official told The Intercept that they did not remember the name of the pharmacy, only that it was located somewhere in the South. “The fear was that publicity would result in this company no longer wanting … to do business.” Typically, the government logs payments to vendors in an online database, but there is no public record of any BOP payments to Absolute Standards. “I don’t recall how it was done. It was probably not done through their normal payments process,” the former BOP official said. “Everything was done discreetly, because again, the fear was that publicity would result in this company no longer wanting to be willing to do business.” After learning that the BOP had secured execution drugs, officials from other states started inquiring about whether they could buy from the same company. An official from Nebraska, which was prevented in 2015 from importing drugs from India, asked the BOP about its source. The Nebraska Department of Correctional Services did not respond to questions about the communication. In April 2019, an attorney adviser from the Justice Department’s Office of Legislative Affairs emailed colleagues to notify them that a staffer from South Carolina Rep. William Timmons’s office had asked about the federal government’s execution drugs. “Specifically, they ask 1. Does the Federal Government have the ‘cocktail’? 2. Could they transfer it to states under existing law?” the email read. Timmons’s deputy chief of staff, Heather Smith, told The Intercept that the employee who inquired with the BOP no longer worked for the representative. Smith did not know whether the employee ever talked to Absolute Standards. South Carolina has not conducted an execution since May 2011 due to drug shortages. But last September, officials announced that the state had secured pentobarbital. After The Intercept requested records detailing communications between the South Carolina Department of Corrections and Absolute Standards, the corrections team replied that such information was exempt from disclosure, citing in part a state secrecy law that shields records disclosing the identity of people and companies involved in executions. The corrections department did not comment when asked whether its response meant that Absolute Standards was providing the state with execution drugs. In the summer of 2020, as the federal executions got underway, Reps. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., and Jamie Raskin, D-Md., started to raise questions about Absolute Standards’ involvement. They sent a letter to the company on July 14, the same day the government killed Daniel Lewis Lee, the first person to die in the execution spree, stating that they’d seen redacted testing reports “indicating that your company has assisted DOJ in securing and/or testing pentobarbital for death penalty executions.” The lawmakers posed a list of 11 questions to Absolute Standards about its work in the executions. The company did not reply, emails obtained by The Intercept show. There is no public record of further investigation by the lawmakers into Absolute Standards. Pressley’s office did not return multiple requests for comment, and Raskin’s press secretary told The Intercept to contact the House Oversight Committee. Nelly Decker, the communications director for Oversight Committee Democrats, wrote in an email that she had “nothing more to add” on the inquiry. “The risk that Connecticut medicines will imminently fuel the death penalty in executing states across the country is high.” In April 2021, Jennifer Lamb, the district director for Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., brought Absolute Standards to the attention of state Attorney General William Tong. “It appears the company may have supplied the US Department of Justice with ingredients used to make pentobarbital for use in federal executions,” Lamb wrote. “There are several states that are now actively looking to follow the federal government’s lead in acquiring this drug and resuming executions,” she continued. Describing Absolute Standards as the only possible supplier of pentobarbital ingredients for capital punishment, Lamb warned that Connecticut could be complicit in clearing the way for executions across the country. The following month, Tong sent a letter to Absolute Standards informing its owners that “Connecticut has a strong public policy against executions.” Providing drugs to carry them out, he wrote, “is contrary to the values and policies of this state.” Tong requested details about the company’s activities, expressing concern that the business might “also be providing pentobarbital, or contemplating providing the drug, for use by individual states in their attempts to execute human beings.” Connecticut Assistant Attorney General Joshua Perry, named in the letter as the point of contact for future correspondence, declined to comment. After John Oliver named Absolute Standards as the BOP’s source, a spokesperson for Tong told CT Insider that the attorney general was reviewing the company but had not launched an investigation. The outlet also reported that state lawmakers are now exploring legislation to ban Connecticut companies from selling lethal injection drugs. Abe Bonowitz of Death Penalty Action protests near the federal prison complex in Terre Haute, Ind., on July 15, 2020. Photo: Jeremy Hogan/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images Absolute Standards is known for its flexibility in the scientific industry. “They can pivot pretty easily as far as what the needs are of whatever industries,” said Meredith Millay, director of product management at Emerald Scientific, a company focused on cannabis science that has worked with Absolute Standards for a decade and sells products made by the Connecticut business. “If you need something and you can’t find what you need … they are small enough to where you can put in a special request and get custom standards made.” Absolute Standards has boasted about the “world class manufacturing” and “internationally recognized quality” of its analytical reference materials and performance evaluation samples, compounds used to calibrate lab equipment and increase the precision of scientific analysis conducted by a wide range of entities. Criscio started the business in 1990, later employing his son and daughter. The company is registered with the DEA to manufacture Schedule II through V drugs, according to documents filed with the Connecticut Department of Consumer Protection. When asked about Absolute Standards and the API for pentobarbital, the DEA said it “does not comment on specific registrants.” In recent years, the company netted contracts with the U.S. Department of the Interior and the Environmental Protection Agency, contracts and invoices obtained through records requests show. In 2017, for example, the company sold the Interior Department $88,500 worth of analytes in substances such as ethanol and soil. State agencies such as the California State Water Resources Control Board and the New York Office of Cannabis Management list Absolute Standards as one of a handful of vendors approved to conduct testing to ensure the quality of lab results. Criscio has vehemently denied his company’s role in executions. Last October, The Intercept visited the Absolute Standards office, a small one-story building covered in weathered aluminum siding. When The Intercept inquired about Criscio at the reception desk, a woman said that he was out for the rest of the week. But later in the afternoon, Criscio arrived at the office, wearing a sweatshirt emblazoned with the NASA logo. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Nothing to talk about,” Criscio told The Intercept in the parking lot after being asked whether his company supplied execution drugs. “You’re on private property. If I have to, I’ll call the police. Is that what you want me to do?” He then went inside. After The Intercept approached another man outside to ask about pentobarbital, Criscio reemerged and called the police, telling the operator, “I have two people on my property refusing to leave, harassing my employees.” “I’m ready to have a fucking heart attack right now. Get off my fucking property,” he said, growing increasingly agitated. “I do not know what you’re talking about. That’s all I have to say. I’m not gonna say no more.” The Intercept left a note at an address listed for Arpie, the company’s director. He did not reply and has not answered subsequent phone calls, text messages, or emails. In early April, after the John Oliver segment, Criscio maintained that his company did not supply drugs for the federal executions. “Yeah, no, we don’t make that material,” he told The Intercept. “I’m the owner of the company. I’m telling you there’s no comment. Thank you, goodbye.” This story was supported by a grant from Columbia University’s Ira A. Lipman Center for Journalism and Civil and Human Rights, in conjunction with Arnold Ventures. The post “Little Home Market”: The Connecticut Company Accused of Fueling an Execution Spree appeared first on The Intercept.

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The more plastic companies make, the more they pollute

A new study, drawing on five years of data collected across 84 countries, proves what seems self-evident.

The more plastic a company makes, the more pollution it creates. That seemingly obvious, yet previously unproven, point, is the main takeaway from a first-of-its-kind study published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances. Researchers from a dozen universities around the world found that, for every 1 percent increase in the amount of plastic a company uses, there is an associated 1 percent increase in its contribution to global plastic litter. In other words, if Coca-Cola is producing one-tenth of the world’s plastic, the research predicts that the beverage behemoth is responsible for about a tenth of the identifiable plastic litter on beaches or in parks, rivers, and other ecosystems. That finding “shook me up a lot, I was really distraught,” said Win Cowger, a researcher at the Moore Institute for Plastic Pollution Research and the study’s lead author. It suggests that companies’ loudly proclaimed efforts to reduce their plastic footprint “aren’t doing much at all” and that more is needed to make them scale down the amount of plastic they produce. Significantly, it supports calls from delegates to the United Nations global plastics treaty — which is undergoing its fourth round of discussions in Ottawa, Canada, through Tuesday — to restrict production as a primary means to “end plastic pollution.” “What the data is saying is that if the status quo doesn’t change in a huge way — if social norms around the rapid consumption and production of new materials don’t change — we won’t see what we want,” Cowger told Grist. Read Next Petrochemical companies have known for 40 years that plastics recycling wouldn’t work Joseph Winters That plastic production should be correlated with plastic pollution is intuitive, but until now there has been little quantitative research to prove it — especially on a company-by-company basis. Perhaps the most significant related research in this area appeared in a 2020 paper published in Environmental Science and Technology showing that overall marine plastic pollution was growing alongside global plastic production. Other research since then has documented the rapidly expanding “plastic smog” in the world’s oceans and forecasted a surge in plastic production over the next several decades. The Sciences Advances article draws on more than 1,500 “brand audits” coordinated between 2018 and 2022 by Break Free From Plastic, a coalition of more than 3,000 environmental organizations. Volunteers across 84 countries collected more than 1.8 million pieces of plastic waste and counted the number of items contributed by specific companies. About half of the litter that volunteers collected couldn’t be tied to a specific company, either because it never had a logo or because its branding had faded or worn off. Among the rest, a small handful of companies — mostly in the food and beverage sector — turned up most often. The top polluters were Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Nestlé, Danone, Altria — the parent company of Philip Morris USA — and Philip Morris International (which is a separate company that sells many of the same products). More than 1 in 10 of the pieces came from Coca-Cola, the top polluter by a significant margin. Overall, just 56 companies were responsible for half of the plastic bearing identifiable branding. The researchers plotted each company’s contribution to plastic pollution against its contribution to global plastic production (defined by mass, rather than the number of items). The result was the tidy, one-to-one relationship between production and pollution that caused Cowger so much distress. Log-log linear regressions and point plot for the relationship between the percent of global plastic mass produced by companies (x axis) and the mean percent of the total branded plastic found in the audit events (y axis). Courtesy of Win Cowger Many of the top polluters identified in the study have made voluntary commitments to address their outsize plastic footprint. Coca-Cola, for example, says it aims to reduce its use of “virgin plastic derived from nonrenewable sources” by 3 million metric tons over the next five years, and to sell a quarter of its beverages in reusable or refillable containers by 2030. By that date the company also aims to collect and recycle a bottle or can for each one it sells. Pepsi has a similar target to reduce virgin plastic use to 20 percent below a 2018 baseline by the end of the decade. Nestlé says it had reduced virgin plastic use by 10.5 percent as of 2022, and plans to achieve further reductions by 2025. In response to Grist’s request for comment, a spokesperson for Coca-Cola listed several of the company’s targets to reduce plastic packaging, increased recycled content, and scale up reusable alternatives. “We care about the impact of every drink we sell and are committed to growing our business in the right way,” the spokesperson said. Four of the other top polluting companies did not respond to a request for comment. It’s worth noting that many of the companies’ plans involve replacing virgin plastic with recycled material. This does not necessarily address the problem outlined in the Science Advances study, since plastic products are no less likely to become litter just because they’re made of recycled content. There’s also a limit to the number of times plastic can be recycled — experts say just two or three times — before it must be sent to a landfill or an incinerator. Many plastic items cannot be recycled at all. Richard Thompson, a professor of marine biology at the University of Plymouth in the U.K., commended the researchers for making “a very useful contribution to our understanding about the link between production and pollution.” He said the findings could shape regulations to make companies financially responsible for plastic waste — based on the specific amount they contribute to the environment. The findings could also inform this week’s negotiations for the U.N. global plastics treaty, where delegates are continuing to spar over whether and how to restrict production. According to Cowger, if the treaty really aims to “end plastic pollution” — as it states in its mandate — then negotiators will need to think beyond voluntary measures and regulate big producers. “It’s not going to be Coca-Cola or some other big company saying, ‘I’m gonna reduce my plastic by 2030, you’ll see,’” Cowger told Grist. “It’s gonna be a country that says, ‘If you don’t reduce by 2030, you’re going to get hit with a huge fine.’” This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The more plastic companies make, the more they pollute on Apr 24, 2024.

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