Comment on In combining forces, Portland professionals seek marketing inertia

Boll & Branch worked with farmers in Texas to make $700 sheets out of the top 0.01% of the world’s cotton supply. When most people think of luxurious bedding, they imagine silky, breathable sheets, made from fine, high staple cotton. Boll & Branch wants to add another criteria to that list: Luxury sheets shouldn’t harm the planet, either.

After a decade of lobbying, SoCalGas is planning to blend hydrogen into gas lines serving a mostly Latino town in the San Joaquin Valley. A small California town populated by Latino farmworkers where the average resident makes around $12,000 a year could be a testing ground for a controversial solution to lower greenhouse gas emissions after several wealthier and far whiter communities rejected similar proposals.

Rules proposed to prevent customers from having to cover public utilities’ expenses for lobbyists, advertising and political contributions are too weak to prevent potential abuses, critics said. A public meeting Monday drew speakers who want to see the Colorado Public Utilities Commission strengthen regulations to carry out a 2023 law that was passed after a widespread outcry over high utility bills. Besides directing utilities to look at avoiding the kind of price jumps that doubled or tripled some Coloradans’ heat bills in early 2023, Senate Bill 23-291 prohibited utilities from adding expenses for lobbying, certain advertising, public relations, political contributions and membership dues to customers’ rates. But the bill’s prime sponsors as well as a dozen Colorado organizations and a national watchdog group have argued the proposed regulations aren’t detailed or specific enough to ensure that ratepayers aren’t footing some of the bill.

Lost and damaged wheelchairs are such a prevalent problem in U. S. air travel that federal officials have proposed new rules that could slap airlines with six-figure fines when mishaps occur. But an attempt to give Coloradans more power to seek compensation for problems they experience with their mobility devices at Denver International Airport faltered at the State Capitol as the recent legislative session wrapped up.

Meanwhile, wages and benefits netted by private-sector workers rose 4.1% through 2023. The typical compensation package for chief executives who run companies in the S&P 500 jumped nearly 13% last year, easily surpassing the gains for workers at a time when inflation was putting considerable pressure on Americans’ budgets.

Parachute is partnering with SuperCircle to recycle home textiles. If you keep towels until they’re threadbare, or if your sheets are covered in stains, you may think the only place to put them is in the trash. But now you can keep those textiles out of the landfill and give them a second life through a new recycling program at Parachute.