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On a rural road in Kansas, surrounded by farm fields, a startup called Vaulted Deep is pioneering a new type of carbon removal: injecting animal manure and sewage sludge 1,000 feet underground to permanently store CO2. One of its biggest customers is Google, which announced today that it plans to buy 50,000 tons of carbon removal from the startup over the next five years. Microsoft announced a similar deal in July. Its part of the tech giants broader effort to deal with their carbon footprints as AI energy demand grows. The companies are also trying to help accelerate new solutions that others can use. Our carbon removal program is all about finding the right ways to fix the atmosphereand then being the tip of the sphere to catalyze those right ways, says Randy Spock, who leads Google’s work on carbon removal. What we look for in that regard is pretty simple. We care about things that can be highly certain of having impact. And can reach really high scale to the extent that they can put a dent in climate change. [Photo: Courtesy of Google/Vaulted Deep] How Vaulted Deep tackles two problems Vaulted Deeps unconventional approach tackles two problems at once, says CEO Julia Reichelstein. We tackle excess organic waste and what to do with it in a safe, affordable, scalable way. And then we also tackle the problem of climate change. The company injects the waste into rock formations deep underground, where it’s locked up for hundreds of thousands of years. It doesn’t decompose and add CO2 and methane emissions to the air. (It’s also far away from groundwater, so it doesn’t create new pollution.) [Photo: Courtesy of Google/Vaulted Deep] At the startups site in Kansas, dozens of trucks deliver waste each day. Most of it comes from nearby cattle feedlots. “If you go to these feedlots, you’ll often see mountains of manure piled up,” Reichelstein says. That leads to multiple issues beyond climate pollution. Runoff from the waste pollutes water and can lead to algae blooms and dead zones. The stink can travel miles. Methane from the manure adds to local air pollution. That’s a deeper problem in the food system: The environment can’t keep up with current levels of meat production. Americans now eat around twice as much meat, per capita, as they did a century ago. Small family farms used to be able to use manure as fertilizer on nearby fields; now there’s far more poop than farms can use. But until Americans start eating fewer burgers, Vaulted Deep’s approach offers another way to deal with the excess waste. Farms aren’t the only challengehuman waste from wastewater treatment plants is often spread out on fields to return to the soil. That can introduce other problems, including pollution from PFAS (forever chemicals) or other contamination found in the waste. Waste is also sometimes sent to landfills or incinerated. Vaulted Deep can also make use of waste from paper mills, which causes other pollution. The company plans to build multiple sites across the country to deal with organic waste. Turning waste tech into climate tech Vaulted Deep spun out from another company, Advantek, that has been injecting waste underground in L.A. for 15 years. Initially, the technology focused only on the problem of disposal. Most sewage sludge from Los Angeles is either shipped to California’s Central Valley, causing pollution issues, or used to produce electricity. (Turning poop into electricity doesn’t eliminate emissions, though it’s called renewable energy.) Putting some of the waste deep underground8,000 feet deep, in that casehelped reduce how much was being sent elsewhere. When Reichelstein learned about the technology, she helped launch Vaulted to focus on the climate benefits, knowing that it was a relatively simple and affordable way to store CO2 durably. When the startup sells carbon removal to companies, it measures how much carbon in the waste otherwise would have been emitted on a field or in a landfill. Now, it’s working with Google to also measure how much methane is being reduced. [Photo: Courtesy of Google/Vaulted Deep] Google is especially interested in tackling “superpollutants” like methane, which are heating up the planet even faster than CO2. In the short term, methane has around 80 times the warming power of CO2. ̴The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) estimates that these superpollutants, like methane, have been responsible for close to half of planetary warming to date,” says Spock. “Everyone agrees if we don’t take action to destroy them, they will keep warming the planet really rapidly in the near term. So if we only focus on CO2, we’re only focusing on a piece of the puzzle rather than the whole planet puzzle.” The tech company is paying for carbon removal from a wide range of companies, from a startup helping fight ocean acidification to a company that helps HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning) technicians destroy HFCs (hydrofluorocarbons), another superpollutant, from air conditioners. The goal is to support as many potential solutions as possible, as quickly as possible. “We’re keenly aware that we are at the starting line of these efforts as a planet,” says Spock. “And now is the time to cast a really wide net and see what works at pilot scale, so that we can make an informed decision about what makes sense to really press the accelerator on as a planet.”
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I spend my days talking to executives who believe their teams are performing near full capacity. They point to busy calendars, overflowing inboxes, and long hours as proof. But the data tells a different storyand its costing millions. Our latest Productivity Lab analysis of more than 300,000 workers across 5,619 organizations reveals a costly reality: Companies lose $11.2 million in productivity per 1,000 employees every year. Utilization averages just 87% of capacity, while payroll costs continue at 100%the equivalent of paying for 130 workers who arent contributing. Most leaders dont realize this is happening. Across all tracked organizations, that gap adds up to $2.86 billion in lost productivity each year, based on an average productivity goal of 6 hours and 50 minutes of productive work per day. When ‘Busy’ Isnt the Same as ‘Productive’ The data goes further, showing that 58% of staff failed to meet productivity goals set by their own organizations. By industry, the gap is significant: Computer hardware has the highest underutilization rate at 71%, while logistics is lowest at 41%. One likely factor is the nature of the work and the corresponding work culture. Industries like logistics often operate with built-in accountabilitybillable hours, compliance requirements, and mission-critical timelinesthat make performance visible and consequences immediate. These structures tend to surface productivity gaps faster than in roles where outputs arent directly tied to fixed deadlines or regulatory oversight. The Leadership Assumption That Costs Millions Our benchmark data shows small organizations lose $162,000 to $542,000 in untapped capacity annually, while large enterprises see losses of $3.7 million to $3.9 million. Even small inefficiencies multiply quickly and payroll costs are only one component of the story. Additional waste related to underutilization begins to creep in such as disengagement, quality issues, and collaboration shortcomings. The issue isnt laziness or poor motivationits structural. Traditional management focuses on hours worked or activity levels, which overlooks the core question: Is the work creating measurable value? When activity isnt aligned to outcomes, organizations dilute the impact of their teams efforts. Turning Underutilization Into Growth Addressing underutilization isnt just about cutting wasteit unlocks capacity for work that drives growth. Ive seen companies change their trajectory by measuring actual output against capacity, then redesigning roles so people focus on what they do best: problem-solving, relationship building, and strategic thinking. The most successful organizations share three traits: They measure productivity by activity AND outcomesfocusing on work volume alongside the value created. They build operational visibility instead of assuming performanceidentifying bottlenecks and barriers before they impact results. They treat workforce optimization as a revenue growth strategy, not just cost controlusing freed capacity to drive innovation and competitive advantage. This is a solvable problem. Its not about asking people to work harderits about working smarter, with clarity on what work is happening. From there, its about acting on those insights to eliminate bottlenecks and channel capacity toward high-value work that is core to each role. A Practical Playbook for Closing the Gap The first step is to take stock of how productivity is measured today. Many organizations track time spent or activity levels without connecting them to real value creation. Incorporating outcome-based metricssuch as completed deliverables, customer impact, or revenue contributioncreates a much clearer picture of performance. Next, examine where work slows down. This often means mapping processes end to end to identify bottlenecks, unnecessary steps, or recurring delays. In some cases, this exercise reveals quick winslike automating routine tasks with AIthat free up hours without adding headcount. Visibility is critical, but it must be purposeful. The goal isnt to monitor for the sake of watchingits to uncover where good work gets stuck and why. This could involve implementing reporting tools that highlight delays or variances from plan so managers can intervene before deadlines are missed. Finally, treat the capacity you recover as an investment, not just a savings. Redirect that time and talent toward strategic initiatives, innovation or customer-focused projects that move the business forward. Pair that with a regular cadence of process reviews to ensure inefficiencies dont creep back in as teams and priorities evolve. The opportunity to unlock capacity is hidden in plain sightyou just have to know where to look. Our benchmark analysis shows the data is already there for leaders who are ready to take advantage of it.
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E-Commerce
This week, Apple launched its biggest design update in years: Liquid Glass. Its a new approach to the software design behind the iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch. Liquid Glass is making appearances on everything from Apples marketing materials to the 24-carat trophy that Tim Cook gifted to Donald Trump. Apple is betting that it’s going to redefine the visual language of its user experience as it enters the AI era. But at least for now, half a dozen UX experts agree that its anywhere from mildly disappointing to outright broken, due to an aesthetic-first approach that could leave many users behind. If prior Apple releases have taught us anything, its that it will take anywhere from months to years for Apple to solve Liquid Glasss core issues, and even then, it could be left wrestling with its own flawed metaphor. [insert paywall] The burden of scale With 1.5 billion active iPhones, Apple shoulders an incredible burden of scale. For every magical interaction, there can be an equally devastating reaction. Take its groundbreaking smartphone, for example, which enabled you to map your way anywhere in the world but also pinpoint users in mass surveillance capitalism. Then there’s the AirTag, which can find your lost keys but, as we warned, has enabled stalking and led to a class action lawsuit including several allegations of murder. When I met Apple reps around the time of the announcement of Liquid Glass in June, I was left with the impression that the team very much feels the weight of Middle America atop all of its decisions. Liquid Glass, at launch, would be a first step toward new modalities that a transforming, transparent interface could create in a world that feels manifest-destined to land at augmented and virtual realities. [Image: Apple] Still, Apple knows that people rely on their iPhones for everything, and they cant wholesale change the way people use the most important device in their lives. Thats why Liquid Glass is less a deconstruction of iOS than a luxe reskinreplacing chunks of iOS piece by piece rather than revolutionizing it, for now. Its a toe-dipping sensibility that I appreciate. Moving fast and breaking things is crucial for fundraising and devastating for real life. Apple may serve its customers better by being careful, adjusting its designs little by little, more like a car company than a tech startup. Unfortunately, Apple still didnt nail Liquid Glass out of the gate. And it doesnt help that, rumor has it, the company put a tight deadline on itself, only developing Liquid Glass for six months before its announcement. While Liquid Glass is full of interesting ideas and some truly gorgeous animation work from Apples still-unparalleled technicians, experts I spoke to pointed out that it was inconsistently implemented, and they believe it will make life worse for a lot of its users. They say its cognitive load (think of it as the invisible tax on your brain) is higher across the board than its previous UX. Specifically, its low contrast designwhich often blurs the distinction between the phones background and its messages in the foregroundwill prove difficult for older adults, especially, to read. I think the worst problems will not be for [people with disabilities] . . . who will probably just turn it off and/or use screen readers in the first place, Jakob Nielsen, a four-decade usability expert, told me. But low-vision users and people with various forms of slight cognitive impairments [that is, not even serious enough that they consider themselves disabled] will suffer. UX experts I spoke to for this story arent just mindless Apple haters; many generally appreciate the ethos of what Apple is doingspecifically, trying to move interface design somewhere new. But theyre worried about the unintended consequences of Liquid Glass, which is presented as an opt-out feature on iOS 26. I can see that my father is going to really struggle, says Sonja Radovancevic, creative director at Metalab. He’s going to be, like, Oh my god, I’m definitely going to go back to Samsung. Apple is trying to head off the worst of these criticisms through iteration. It has been fine-tuning certain features of Liquid Glass, like the level of transparency (during beta testing), and will continue to do so. But to get Liquid Glass to where it needs to be from a usability perspective, Apple might end up undercutting its own metaphor. [Image: Apple] The Liquid Works If one core idea has promise inside Liquid Glass, its that Apple is introducing stretchable, reshapable buttons and new animations, which can break out of the more static menu bars weve known for so long. Basically, its what you could call the liquid half of Liquid Glass. Apple has been building toward this more fluid interface for some time. Andy Allen, a lauded digital designer who created the Paper app before founding his own Not Boring apps, points out that developers have been envious of Apples Dynamic Island for years. That little black pill hiding the camera on the top of your screen continues to mature, stretching and morphing into a do-anything bit of UI that can grow and split to scan your mug for Face ID, control music playback, and split notifications side by side. [Video: Not Boring] Liquid Glass shares some of these possibilities with developers, allowing them to build more flexibility into their own app UIs. Floating atop the app, buttons can now stretch to reveal toolbars or merge to group contros. Ideally, these updates dont just lead to a prettier UI, but one that can hide clutter away until right when you need it. The white space that a morphable UI creates is exciting to many in the field, even if weve seen bits of this idea before from Googles Material Design. Instead of providing rigid systems, Liquid Glass could, theoretically, reshape into just about anything. [Image: Apple] Right now, though, those floating, morphable interfaces feel different from app to app. You dont know if theyll reshape in front of your eyes (as they do in Music) or pop you to another screen (as they do in Messages . . . and sometimes also in Music!). I do feel like there is always promise in trying to move toward something, as opposed to just being stuck in our ways, Radovancevic says. She makes the point that liquidity offers a path for Apple to melt away extraneous informationand to prepare itself for AI-led interfaces. Ultimately, we can imagine that in the future, there will be way less interface on the screen anyway. [Image: Apple] Some of the best work on Liquid Glass is in Apples tiniest details. One of the small, great updates in iOS 26 is what Allen calls Apples whiter than white animations. The interface takes HDR contrasts to new heights, creating a glow that developers can use in their software. Some buttons appear to light up beyond whats white on your screen. Allen found this particularly useful for his Camera app, where the focus controls can glow white even on a white backdrop. I find the effect a bit too intense while texting in a dark roomeach time I send a message, my chat bubble flashes with an iridescent burst, so brightly that I look away from the screen. The Glass is broken Liquid UIs dont work consistently yet, but in theory, they make a lot of sense. Perhaps more problematic for Apple is the glass part. At launch, critics pointed out two issues. The first was that it failed to add new functionality to the phone. The second was more ironic: Glasss fatal flaw is the clarity with which it depicts information. Legibility is still of concern to every UX specialist I talked to for this piece. They flagged that Liquid Glass presents a significant challenge to cognitive load and creates accessibility issues where there were none in the OS before. In some spots, like the beautiful magnifier tool that helps you highlight words, the glass distortion effects are simply joyful. In many others, they muddle information and make it harder to understand what youre looking at. Charles Mauro, a human factors researcher and consultant for 40 years, says the glass is creating the most significant human factors issues with iOS 26. Liquid Glass in Apple Music. Begins on left, morphs to the right. [Screenshot: courtesy of the author] Mauro points to Liquid Glasss core conceit as making everything you see tricky to parse. The glass buttons that float above your library in Music blur with your albums. In your Control Center, they almost disappear into the background. He notes that text sizes and colors shift across the interface, ever-changing the information density on a page. And he points out that the automated accessibility tests we have today cant examine complex transparencies like this to highlight human factors issues. Apple Glass in Control Center. Accessibility mode left, regular mode right. Note how much each of these screens now darkens and blurs the iOS backdrop on top. [Screenshot: courtesy of the author] You might think that only people with disabilities will be affected, but Mauro insists that Apple Glass will increase the mental burden on everyone. He says this is largely due to the fact that Apple is creating minimal contrast between the glass information on top thats vying for your attention and everything below it. (This balance is known as figure-ground contrast.) If black type on white paper presents the most idyllic contrast for your eyes, clear glass that diffuses the shapes and colors below it verges on the opposite. Contrast represents the very core of our visual processing, possibly due to limbic parts of our brains that evolved to recognize faces by shadows and predators by movement. When you reach a desktop-style interfacelike on our phones and PCscontrast isnt just about text on a page, but about discerning a stack of the background stuff from whats above it. The most pertinent information floats to the top to grab our focus, and for good reason. A UX principle known as Hicks law dictates that the more choices someone has, the more difficult and time-consuming the decision becomes. All of this means that a low-contrast pile of media is just a lot for our brains to juggle. It seems like [Apple] has sort of put this forward without having the amount of time to almost challenge, Should these things be floating? Or What is exactly the quality of this blur that’s happening inside of the glass? Radovancevic says. Maybe it does feel a little bit impulsive in some way . . . but a lot of this may be interaction problems that have to be solved. Compare this to Google, whose release of Android 16 took the opposite approach of Liquid Glass. During our call, when Glass was still in beta, I had Radovancevic pull up Googles Control Center menu side by side with an iOS 26 beta Control Center featuring Liquid Glass. On Apples interface, the simple flashlight, calculator, and Wi-Fi buttons on this screen became illegibly blended. Whereas Googles buttonsbrighter buttons atop a darker backgroundrepresent a more legible foreground/background relationship. Theyre using a lot of solid color, so it’s automatically going to [work], she says, before concluding that neither of them is necessarily the answer. [Image: Apple] Striking a compromise Apple has since adjusted its approach to the Control Center. In fact, Apple has been constantly fine-tuning Glass, in what appear to be experiments to fix legibility. In beta releases, it reduced Glasss opacityfrosting it and adjusting the blur effectsbefore tuning it more transparently again. In the final release, theyve landed on a significant compromise. The Control Center is far more legible now than in those earlier glass experimentsits now quite similar to Googles version. Apple increased the opacity of the glass, and to help further, it darkens and blurs your wallpaper. Today, you no longer really see the wallpaper through a glass interface. Apple traded continuity of interface for legibility. Operationally, it was the right decision for users, but it does appear as an inelegant solution to Apple’s glass problem. Meanwhile, the moments of that hypnotic, optically distorting glass are few and far between. The most prominent permutation I see is in the icon for nested groups of apps, which appear framed in something like a squared-off water droplet. This bit of interface almost feels anachronistic as it has entered a more accessible context. For developers to figure out where to maximize versus minimize implementations of glass, they are largely on their own. Apple has offered minimal guidelines around the best use of Liquid Glass within app interfaces, frustrating some developers, but it does offer them the option to tune opacity and blur in their own apps. We tried to implement Liquid Glass and found it didnt work in a lot of cases, in terms of readability, or aesthetically it clashed, so we ended up pairing it back quite a bit, says Allen, who later notes: I bet theres not a person on the Apple design team who doesnt wish they had another six months or year to polish it up more. While Apple views Liquid Glass as the foundational design language of its future interfaces, some in the industry question whether it pushes things far enough. Allens greater criticism is less about legibility than the limitations of the foundational technologies behind Liquid Glass effects. Hes built his Not Boring software collection as rich, experiential products with true 3D interfaces that leverage the powerful graphics processing of these supercomputers in our pockets. The aesthetic-first approach of Liquid Glass pulls on his heartstrings, but he points out that its not actually 3Dsome future-proof interface that can take us into the next decade. The glistening, specular highlight effects you see on elements like app icons are actually 2D shaders. If youre someone like me who lives and breathes 3D, we were hoping to see a lot more 3D: true 3D icons, true 3D interfaces, Allen says. He admits that extra processing might be more taxing on an iPhone battery. But he also thinks that to move the interface forward, UX designers need to be thinking in the third dimension. And why build layers of transparent glass interface if not to explore 3D? [Image: Apple] Apple can fix glass, but its worth asking why No doubt, Apple will continue to refine the design language, much as it has done in the past. Apples Aqua design language in OSX, announced in 2000, struggled with legibility around its transparent water effects, and took about a year to repair, and a few more to run smoothly. When Apple launched iOS 7, introducing a flat design and sleek sans serif fonts to the iPhone in 2013, it struggled with legibility again. In less than a year, Apple made rapid adjustments and laid much of the foundation for what were still using today. I suspect a similar timeline. In another year or two, this will feel a lot more intentional and polished, Allen says. Theyll have a better understanding . . . [of] how to use it themselves. For the last week, Apple critics have dunked on the company for all sorts of superficial reasons. The logo on the iPhone 17 Pro is in the wrong place for its case. The curvature of the iPhone Airs camera doesn’t match the radius of its case. These issues demonstrate a certain carelessness, perhaps. But, like a thin new iPhone thats not perceptually much thinner than an iPhone 6 (2014), they also dont really matter. They dont affect how well you can read and communicate. For anyone with vision impairments, in particular, UX experts warn that Liquid Glass could continue to be hard to use in many contexts. Given the commonality of macular degeneration, it will impact older adults in particular. But Apples challenging information architecture will impact everyone, including people with mental disabilities like ADHD. Apples own designers arent ignorant of such issues: In fact, I hear the design team is split on the direction of Liquid Glass. It wasnt an inevitable evolution for Apple. Its transparency was introduced in Vision Pro as a practical way that people could see floating screens but not be cut off from the world around them. Of course, those same challenges dont exist on the iPhone, so the benefits to transparency arent the same. Notably, you can disable Liquid Glasss worst offenses in the Accessibility settings. (Its not labeled Liquid Glasscheck Display and Text Size.) You can reduce the window transparency while increasing the contrast. Doing so frosts over the glass effect and flattens the background. You lose the most beautiful animations that seem to break the very laws of physics of your phone, but you can also read things a lot more easily. These compromises feel like the only way to fix Liquid Glass, and so its unsurprising that Apple has ultimately worked its accessibility options into instances of the main interface. The fix negates the most egregious issues. It also negates the core concept behind Liquid Glass.
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