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When people picture sand spread across idyllic beaches and endless deserts, they understandably think of it as an infinite resource. But as we discuss in a just-published perspective in the journal Science, over-exploitation of global supplies of sand is damaging the environment, endangering communities, causing shortages and promoting violent conflict.

the Council of Canadians, one of Canada's most respected social advocacy organizations, did the unthinkable: It called for a boycott of Nestlé Water. The group accused the long-embattled water bottling giant of exploiting its access to Canadian aquifers. In Ontario and British Columbia, the company pays as little as $2.25 per 1 million liters while residents struggle to find safe water supplies.

Serious labour rights violations have taken place at Brazilian farms linked to some of the largest international coffee certification systems, including Rainforest Alliance and UTZ, according to an investigation by Repórter Brasil. Brazil is the largest coffee producer in the world, with about one-third of all coffee consumed planted in the country. These violations include workers' pay packets being falsely docked resulting in some receiving less than half Brazil's minimum wage, and workers being hired informally and without mandatory medical tests. One farm even promoted its output with a Fairtrade certificate it was not entitled to use.

The Indonesian Palm Oil Pledge, a group of the world's biggest palm oil companies committed to building an industry free of deforestation and labour exploitation, has disbanded less than two years after it was launched.

Large palm oil companies that have promised to act ethically have been accused of land grabbing, ignoring human rights and exploiting labour in their African and Asian plantations.

Through an ambitious project model combining innovative financing approaches with traditional conservation, World Wildlife Fund (WWF), Frankfurt Zoological Society (FZS) and The Orangutan Project (TOP) will join forces with local communities to actively manage the 100,000 acres of former logging forest, known as Bukit Tigapuluh (known as Thirty Hills), to protect rather than exploit the land's natural resources.

On January 31, The Hong Kong Legislative Council voted 49 to 4 to phase out the sale of antique ivory. As Tiffany May at The New York Times reports, the city will ban all sale of ivory, new and antique, by 2021, closing a system that poachers have previously exploited. The move will help staunch a significant player in the ivory market, which drives the destruction of elephant populations. In recent years, the United Nations estimates that poachers kill up to 100 elephants each day, which has devastated their populations.

Two years after Greenpeace launched a campaign demanding Thai Union, the world's largest tuna company, take action to eliminate exploitative and unsustainable practices from its supply chains, the two organizations have finally put their long-running conflict to rest.

A year after being suspended from the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) and dropped by companies such as Unilever, Mars, Nestlé and Kellogg for clearing peatlands in Kalimantan, Indonesia, Malaysian palm oil producer IOI Group has announced plans to eliminate deforestation and exploitation throughout its supply chain. In response, Greenpeace has suspended its active campaign to give IOI time to show it is serious about reform.