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"Green Game-Changers: Insights for Mainstreaming Business Innovation" (World Wildlife Fund and Verdantix) features 16 case studies that demonstrate how sustainable business innovations are flowing between regions of the globe. The report also details the types of green innovations that could potentially disrupt established companies.

"Trend Report: The Future of Sustainable Fashion" (H&M Foundation and Accenture) identifies five megatrends driving sustainable innovation in the fashion industry based on an analysis of 3,000 applications submitted for the H&M Foundation's 2017 Global Change Award: the sharing economy, digitalization, biodesign, re-selling and re-design, and innovative recycling.

A group of organizations - including C&A Foundation, the Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, McDonough Innovation, and the Sustainable Apparel Coalition - have launched the Fashion For Good initiative, which aims to help set the apparel industry on a more sustainable path using a Cradle to Cradle-inspired, circular approach to product development. The initiative will engage key players from across the fashion industry and will support the "scale up of technologies, methodologies, and business models with the potential to wholly transform the industry."

Boston-based startup Cambrian Innovation has come up with water-cleaning technology that uses microbes to turn dirty water into clean energy. Cambrian has federal and private equity funding, including $365,000 from the Environmental Protection Agency. "It's where we will go in the future, where waste is a resource and we don't just want to get rid of it, we want to get energy out of it," said April Richards of the EPA's small-business innovation-research program

The days of conventional concrete and carbon-intensive building materials are waning. Along with promising advancements such as concrete made from biofuel waste, carbonate rock made from captured CO2 emissions, and a smart gypsum board that can help regulate room temperatures, three recent innovations in material development illustrate the intensifying search for more sustainable materials - from city streets to cement production plants

Tackling global challenges including Bangladeshi floods, water scarcity, fashion waste and death in childbirth requires creativity and innovation. Here are the runners up for the Sustainia Awards from which a winner will be chosen.

Direct Metal Laser Sintering (DMLS), an aerospace production technology, has the potential to build light, sustainable parts and reduce a company's carbon footprint, according to a study by EOS and Airbus Group Innovations, previously EADS Innovation Works.

Energy storage is the key to the practical development of sustainable energy sources such as solar and wind. Now, it is becoming a hot field in industry and commerce. This article profiles 10 innovative companies that are leading the pack in development of energy-storage technologies

From industry giants thinking beyond freshwater to startups tackling the wastewater, here are the names to watch.

Coca-Cola is working to stay ahead of consumers' sustainable packaging needs via such innovations as the recyclable PlantBottle, as well as by working with suppliers and maximizing the use of renewable materials, said Sarah Dearman, the company's head of sustainable packaging. "Our suppliers play a critical role by working together to advance innovation to help enable all parties to meet their goals," she said.

The Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute has announced the winners of the third Cradle to Cradle Product Design Challenge. 138 design professionals and students in 19 countries worked to submit 79 entries for this third round of the contest, which challenges design students and professionals to apply Cradle to Cradle principles to conceptualize and develop product solutions that can help drive the circular economy. More than 230 designers from 30 countries have participated in the Challenges to date.

Plastics are an important part of the global economy and have many practical applications for everyday life, but their indisputable benefits are significantly outweighed by their environmental drawbacks - namely in regards to ocean pollution. Recognizing the seriousness of the problem, Dell, the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection and NatureWorks are finding new and innovative ways to tackle plastic pollution both at the source and at end-of-life.

In response to water scarcity, municipalities are figuring out ways to treat sewage less like waste and more like a resource.

An innovative chef has come up with an alternative dishwashing procedure that cuts his kitchen's water usage by 80 percent.

The Urban Algae Folly gazebo at Expo 2015 in Milan, Italy, is covered in algae-filled ethylene tetrafluoroethylene plastic that may herald the future of green building. The spirulina in the plastic membranes absorbs carbon dioxide and produces oxygen while expanding more as sunlight intensifies to provide shade. 

Efforts to clean up ocean waste have been stymied by the sheer size of the areas in which plastic is concentrated. Traditional cleanup methods using vessels and nets to collect plastic are too expensive and time-consuming to work. For a job as arduous as this, some disruptive innovation is needed, and 20-year-old Dutch entrepreneur Boyan Slat claims he has created just that. The Ocean Cleanup will passively collect plastic debris in the waters between Japan and South Korea. 

In this Yale Environment 360 video, we present the first of a two-part e360 series, "Wasted," on the vexing global problem of food waste. Filmmaker Karim Chrobog visits two cities - Washington, D.C., and Seoul, South Korea - to examine why so much food goes to waste and what can be done about it. Washington, and the U.S. as a whole, has taken only minor steps to reduce this enormous waste and its related human and environmental costs. By contrast, Seoul has adopted innovative programs to minimize the amount of food that ends up going to landfills to rot. 

Dell has become the second high-profile company to announce a deal with AirCarbon, an innovative plastic material from Newlight Technologies created by pulling carbon out of the air.

In a recent report, NASA pointed out that our world is running on the brink of a freshwater shortage.    When faced with a crisis, history shows us that humanity has an amazing ability to conquer it resourcefully. And that's exactly what many environmental innovators are seeking to do

While so much of our lives have veered toward the digital, many organizations' operations still rely to some degree on paper. Innovative solutions to help minimize the impact of continued paper use include print-optimization technologies and more "sustainable" fonts. Now, Seiko Epson Corporation has developed what it believes to be the world's first compact office paper-making system capable of producing new paper from securely shredded waste paper with minimal use of water.