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For nearly a century, Californians have drained an incredible amount of water from the ground to grow crops and water landscaping. It is not sustainable. The water has not returned. The result is a sinking state. Here are some startling facts about California's groundwater depletion:

Mars has supported recommendations that suggest people should limit the consumption of added sugars to no more than 10% of their daily caloric intake. The company also voiced support of a government proposal to include an added sugars declaration in the Nutritional Facts on all applicable food packaging.

Unregulated carbon pollution from aviation is the fastest-growing source of the greenhouse gas emissions driving global climate change. In fact, if the entire aviation sector were a country, it would be one of the top 10 carbon-polluting nations on the planet. The good news is that we now have a process in place to curb international aviation's skyrocketing emissions. For the first time ever, the United Nations' civil aviation body agreed last week to put a cap on the emissions for an international sector rather than a country. International aviation already accounts for over 2% of global carbon emissions. But this number will soar as demand for air travel continues to rises. In 2010, the aviation industry carried 2.4 billion passengers; in 2050, the number is forecast to rise to 16 billion.

But the fact is that the blockchain is building some serious credibility within the world's biggest banks and financial services firms - they helped fuel more than $1 billion in investments between 2014 and 2016. That visibility has given both established and emerging companies the confidence to experiment. In mid-October, for example, Walmart announced a collaboration with IBM and Tsinghua University in Beijing focused on using the blockchain as a mechanism for authenticating food sources and keeping tabs on all sorts of related data - including the originating farm, batch numbers, processing plant information, expiration dates and storage temperatures.

The euphoria over rise in world tiger population early this year may have been misplaced for India as the official data placed before Parliament shows that 98 tigers died in the country by November 16, 2016, a steep 25 per cent rise over last year when 78 deaths were reported. There are many anti-poaching measures initiated by NTCA which coordinate with state forest departments, but to little avail. In fact, poaching cases increased by more than 100 per cent this year. The figures attribute nearly 30 tiger deaths to poaching this year, which is more than double of last year's figure of 14. Top forest officials that Mail Today spoke with expressed helplessness in their fight against poachers and at times cited "political pressures'' leading to more frequent man-tiger conflict.

Some of China's provinces and companies, however, are moving into business operations that foster the growth of the circular economy, which means designing products that can be taken apart, re-blended or recycled so that waste is not an end result. This is complemented by the fact that the China Petroleum and Chemical Industry Federation (CPCIF) recently signed on to the World Plastics Council, which also has a goal of reducing plastic waste in the environment. 

Businesses love to talk about employee engagement. In fact, an increasing number of businesses see employee engagement as an essential strategy for achieving their goals.

3M, Cisco, Jackson Family Wines, Kimberly-Clark and other major companies announced new commitments to install solar power as part of a new White House initiative. The Obama administration and local governments also announced a series of new policies to speed the deployment of solar across the nation.

Microsoft's internal carbon pricing has helped the company recoup $10 million a year in energy savings and has reduced companywide emissions by the equivalent of 7.5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide. "Microsoft has been a pioneer in facing the facts, which are that climate change is happening and is going to mean a certain amount of change in the economy," said Paula DiPerna, a special adviser to the Carbon Disclosure Project. "Companies need to know what the hidden costs are."

President Obama announced that an additional 15 U.S. cities (19 cities were committed prior to this update) have signed onto the Compact of Mayors-a global platform that helps cities accelerate their sustainability and climate change resiliency efforts. The president set a goal to have at least 100 U.S. cities signed onto the Compact of Mayors by the end of November 2015.

China is building ecocities in droves. Dozens of these green-branded, new frontiers of urbanism are already in an advanced state of development, and upwards of 200 more are on the way. In fact, over 80 per cent of all prefecture level cities in the country (the administrative division below "province") have at least one ecocity project in the works. Over the coming decades, it has been estimated, 50 per cent of China's new urban developments will be stamped with labels such as "eco," "green," "low carbon," or "smart".

The environmental activist group SumOfUs has stolen some of the thunder from PepsiCo's crowdsourced "Crash the Super Bowl" campaign by launching a parody Doritos ad criticizing PepsiCo's palm-oil policies. PepsiCo said the ad, which racked up almost a million views on YouTube, was "focused on fiction rather than facts."

President Obama will issue an Executive Order to cut the Federal Government's GHG emissions by 40% and increase its consumption of electricity from renewable sources by 30% over the next decade, compared to 2008 levels. The plan is projected to save taxpayers up to $18 billion in avoided energy costs.

A committee of the International Civil Aviation Organization has proposed standards for aircraft carbon dioxide emissions. "When fully implemented, the standards are expected to reduce carbon emissions more than 650 million tons between 2020 and 2040, equivalent to removing over 140 million cars from the road for a year," the White House said in a fact sheet

Bed Bath & Beyond, Nordstrom, J.C. Penney and Backcountry.com have been accused of "bamboozling" shoppers by selling products purportedly made of eco-friendly bamboo, but that in fact were made of other, less sustainable materials. "False 'bamboo' claims are a significant problem for consumers who care about buying environmentally friendly products," said Federal Trade Commission attorney Korin Felix

Water is currently one of the biggest risks to the $5 trillion food industry. In fact, the global food sector uses 70% of the world's freshwater. A new report from Ceres ranks the top 42 largest global food and beverage companies, and shows who's doing the best. And the worst.

Here's a sobering fact: The average American generates 4.4 pounds of trash daily, a whopping 30 percent of it packaging. Some people might read that statistic and vow to be stricter about recycling. Julie Corbett took things a tad further.

State and local leaders announced Monday a bill that would ban polystyrene food containers, such as styrofoam cups, in California by 2020. State Sen. Ben Allen, whose district includes UCLA, introduced Senate Bill 705, or the Ocean Pollution Reduction Act, at the Meyer and Renee Luskin Conference Center. Allen said he wanted to introduce this bill at UCLA to highlight the fact that a major institution like UCLA could make the change with positive results. UCLA eliminated polystyrene containers from its campus dining facilities in 2009 as part of a plan to have zero waste to landfill by 2020.

Using forests to fuel power plants in Southeast US and Europe