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Norwegian skier Nikolai Schirmer on Wednesday handed the International Olympic Committee a petition signed by more than 21,000 people and professional athletes who want to stop fossil fuel companies from sponsoring winter sports.Schirmer delivered the “Ski Fossil Free” petition to the IOC’s head of sustainability, Julie Duffus, at a hotel in the Italian city of Milan two days before the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics kick off.The petition asks the IOC and the International Ski and Snowboard Federation, FIS, to publish a report evaluating the appropriateness of fossil fuel marketing before next season. Schirmer, a filmmaker and two-time European Skier of the Year, spoke exclusively with The Associated Press outside the hotel, and said the IOC informed him that it would not allow media to witness their meeting.“It seems like the Olympics aren’t ready to be the positive force for change that they have the potential to be,” Schirmer told the AP afterward. “So I just hope this can be a little nudge in the right direction, but we will see.” Norwegian skier Nikolai Schirmer walks out of a Milan hotel, Wednesday, Feb. 4, 2026, after privately meeting with the IOC’s head of sustainability, Julie Duffus, to hand her a ski fossil free petition with over 20,000 signatures two days before the Opening Ceremony for the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympics. [Photo: Fernanda Figueroa/AP Photo] Retreating winters spurred the skier to take action Schirmer is a freeride skier who documents his adventures exploring Europe’s steep terrains. While freeride skiing is not currently an Olympic event, he said he felt like he needed to bring attention to fossil fuel marketing.“The show goes on while the things you depend on to do your job winter is disappearing in front of your very eyes,” he said. “Not dealing with the climate crisis and not having skiing be a force for change just felt insane. We’re on the front lines.”Burning fossil fuels coal, oil and gas is the largest contributor to global climate change by far. As the Earth warms at a record rate, winters are shorter and milder and there is less snow globally, creating clear challenges for winter sports that depend on cold, snowy conditions. Researchers say the list of locales that could reliably host a Winter Games will shrink substantially in the coming years.Schirmer launched his petition drive in January. He surpassed his goal of 20,000 signatures in one month, and people continue to sign.It’s a first step, he argues, much like a campaign nearly 40 years ago that led to a ban of tobacco advertising at the Games. United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has urged every country to ban advertising from fossil fuel companies.In his meeting on Wednesday, Schirmer said, the IOC’s head of sustainability pointed to the organization’s commitments to renewable energy. He said he feels that isn’t enough.The IOC told the AP in a statement that climate change is one of the most significant challenges facing sport and society. It didn’t say whether it will review fossil fuel marketing, as demanded by the petition.Olympic partners play an important role in supporting the Games, and they include those investing in clean energy, the statement said.FIS welcomes mobilization campaigns like this one, spokesperson Bruno Sassi said. He noted that He noted that no fossil fuel companies are partners of the FIS World Cup and FIS World Championships. Athletes say the petition is the start of a conversation Athlete-driven environmental group “Protect Our Winters” supported the petition drive. This is the first coordinated campaign about fossil fuel advertising centered around an Olympic Games, POW’s CEO Erin Sprague told the AP.American cross-country skier and Team USA member Gus Schumacher said he signed because it starts the conversation.“It’s short-sighted for teams and events to take money from these companies in exchange for helping them hold status as good, long-term energy producers,” he wrote in a text message.American cross-country skier Jack Berry said he’s hopeful this is an influential step toward a systemic shift away from the industry. Berry is seeking a spot on Team USA for the Paralympics in March. An Italian oil and gas company is sponsoring these Olympics Italy’s Eni, one of the world’s seven supermajor oil companies, is a “premium partner” of these Winter Games. Other oil and gas companies sponsor Olympic teams.Eni said it’s strongly committed to the energy transition, as evidenced by how it’s growing its lower carbon businesses, reducing emissions and aiming for carbon neutrality by 2050. And the company defended its role in the Winter Games.“Through the partnership with the biggest event hosted by Italy in the next 20 years, Eni wants to confirm its commitment to the future of the country and to a progressively more sustainable energy system through a fair transition path,” spokesperson Roberto Albini wrote in an e-mail.A January report found that promoting polluting companies at the Olympics will grow their businesses and lead to more greenhouse gas emissions that warm the planet and melt snow cover and glacier ice. Albini disputed the emissions calculations for Eni in the Olympics Torched report.Published by the New Weather Institute in collaboration with Scientists for Global Responsibility and Champions for Earth, the report also looks at the Games’ own emissions.“They have lots of sponsors that aren’t in these sectors,” said Stuart Parkinson, executive director at Scientists for Global Responsibility. “You can get the sponsorship money you’re after by focusing on those areas, much lower carbon areas. That reduces the carbon footprint.” McDermott reported from Cortina D’Ampezzo, Italy. AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics
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E-Commerce
Shares of Chipotle Mexican Grill are down over 6% in premarket trading following a relatively humdrum fourth-quarter earnings report. The report, released on Tuesday, February 3, showed a 2.5% decrease in comparable restaurant sales from quarter-three and a 1.7% drop year-over-year. However, it appears Chipotle has a plan to fix all that: more limited-time offerings. Yes, the companys secret weapon of choice is to bump up its number of fresh menu options. This shift will include four limited-time offers throughout the year, Chipotle CEO Scott Boatwright said in an earnings call. He described the move as an increase in Chipotle’s “menu innovation cadence.” The limited-time offers (or LTOs) will start next week with the return of Chicken al Pastor, which Boatwright called the most celebrated limited-time offer in history, with two times the requests on social media to bring it back compared to any other LTO.” Boatwright adds that Chipotles data shows a core guest is more likely to choose a restaurant that has a new menu item. Protein, rewards, and of course AI Chipotle has also recently rolled out its high-protein line, with Boatwright nodding to the increased use of weight-loss drugs. It includes a $3.50 taco with 15 grams of protein as an addition to an 80-gram double-protein bowl. Theres also a $3.80 high-protein cup that is inspired by hacks that our guests rely on to boost their intake and offers a solution to those looking for smaller portions, which is a fast-growing trend with the adoption of GLP-1s, Boatwright stated. Furthermore, the fast-casual chain is relaunching its rewards program and using AI to create more personalized and impactful experiences. Even with these steps, Chipotle predicts its comparable restaurant sales for 2026 will be flat. The company did report some wins for quarter-four. It reached $2.98 billion in revenue, beating Wall Streets expected $2.96 billion, according to consensus estimates cited by CNBC. What happened to that Chipotle boycott? Quarter-one for 2026 has brought its own uncertainties to the fast-casual chain thanks to misinformation spreading online. Chipotle faced boycott calls in January after Bill Ackman, the billionaire CEO and founder of Pershing Square Capital Management, donated $10,000 to a GoFundMe campaign for Jonathan Ross, the ICE agent who shot and killed Renee Nicole Good as she turned her vehicle away from him. In 2016, Ackman bought a 9.9% stake in Chipotle, valued at about $1 billion, Newsweek reports. At the time, Pershing Square Capital was one of Chipotles top shareholders, but the company sold all of its shares as of November 2025. In response to the boycott, Chipotle took to social media to clarify that Ackman is no longer connected to the brand. Chipotles stock price (NYSE: CMG) was down more than 33% over 12 months when the market closed on Tuesday.
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E-Commerce
Your beauty and skincare products are full of fats and oils. Theyre what makes that cream so moisturizing or that emollient so good at repairing your skin barrier. Often, those lipids come from palm oil or even animal fats, both of which are environmentally damaging to produce. But soon, the lipids in your personal care products could come from upcycled carbon, skipping the agriculture industry entirely. Savor, a tech company that makes fats and oils directly out of carbon, has already proven this technology through the launch of its butter, which began commercial production in 2025. Now, Savor is announcing a personal care and beauty division, bringing its plant- and animal-free fats beyond food to what it calls a “new era” of clean beauty. [Photo: Savor] How Savor makes fats without plants or animals Savor turns the typical production of fats on its head. The usual formula to create fat starts with energy (from the sun or even grow lights), which grows plants, which can then be turned into oilsor be fed to livestock, which produce milk that becomes butter or fat that goes into skincare, such as beef tallow. Those processes require lots of land and have intense climate consequences. Both livestock farming and palm oil, which is used in a majority of beauty and personal care products, drive deforestation, leading to biodiversity loss, greenhouse gas emissions, and more. Savor, however, skips all those agricultural steps. Instead, the company turns energylike captured carbon dioxide, methane, or green hydrogendirectly into fats through a thermochemical process. [Photo: Savor] That carbon is combined with hydrogen, oxygen, and heat to create fatty acids, which can then be composed and rearranged into chains that mimic different fats, from butter to palm oil and cocoa butter. Technically were making beautiful ingredients from thin air, says Jennifer Halliday, an advisor across the biotechnology, beauty, and life sciences industries who is working with Savor. Its a replica of ancient chemistry. Billions of years ago, hydrothermal vents at the bottom of the ocean created a chemical reaction that formed fatty acids out of hydrogen and carbon dioxide. [Photo: Savor] Opportunities in the beauty industry Savors butter has already been adopted by chefs and restaurants, including Michelin-starred SingleThread, in Healdsburg, California, and Jane the Bakery, in San Francisco. It launched commercially in March 2025. Expanding from food to personal care makes sense for Savor, says Kathleen Alexander, cofounder and CEO of the startup, because the two industries overlap in terms of ingredients, environmental impact, and opportunity for change. Two of the main pillars associated with our platform are sustainability and versatility, or tunability,” she says. “Those wind up being very important in food, and they’re very important in the beauty space as well.” By using its animal- and plant-free lipids, Savor says beauty companies could reduce their products emissions by more than 90%, compared to tropical oils like coconut or palm. Palm and tropical oils wind up showing up a lot in the beauty sector, and those are products that we can really only grow in some of the most rich and biodiverse areas of the world. Alexander adds. The agricultural industry at large takes up half of the worlds habitable land, and produces 25% to 30% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Savor skirts this entirely; the company says it requires 800 times less land to make its fats and oils than the agricultural industry. Currently, Savor has a 25,000-square-foot pilot facility outside of Chicago, with plans for a large-scale commercial plant by 2029. The startup, founded in 2022, has raised $33 million, according to PitchBook. Its Series A, funded in 2024, was led by food tech VC firm Synthesis Capital and Bill Gates’s Breakthrough Energy. [Photo: Savor] Vegan tallow and more To launch its beauty and personal care division, Savor created three unique products. First, a Vegan Tallow, a colorless and odorless alternative to beef tallow, which has become a recent skin care craze. We first made that for food customers, and we absolutely still have food customers that are interested in that, Alexander says. But the market pull in food for vegan tallow, it turns out, is a little bit lower than the pull were seeing in beauty and cosmetics. Savor also created what it calls Climate Conscious Triglycerides, a palm-free emollient; and Mimetic, made to mimic the skin barriers structure to nourish and repair it. Dont expect to see Savor-branded beauty products on store shelves, though. The startup created these three products to show what is possible, but ultimately, its a B2B company that will give its ingredients to brand formulations. Savor says its actively engaged with beauty brands, ingredient distributors, and personal care formulators to bring these materials to market, but cant yet share names. And theres lots of room for interest to grow, it adds, as brands adapt to regulatory pressure around their supply chains. Traditional feedstocks from plants and animals are also subject to increasing volatility, because of climate changes effects on crops, geopolitics, traceability concerns, and general price swings. We’ve actually just had a change in the GHG Protocol Standard to require corporations to start including land use in their accounting, which is just huge, Alexander says as an example. That is one of the biggest advantages from an environmental perspective of our platform, that we require less land to make our fats and oils. Humans have always had an inherently extractive relationship with the planet, she adds. It’s how our food chain works; it’s how we make all sorts of products. “What we’re doing at Savor is rethinking, what if humans could make molecules ourselves?” she says. “What would it mean to really exist on this planet in a way where we can actually not necessarily have to have to make use of other creatures in order to nourish ourselves.”
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