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The United States and China contributed most to record mountains of electronic waste such as cellphones, hair dryers and fridges in 2014 and less than a sixth ended up recycled worldwide, a U.N. study said on Sunday. Overall, 41.8 million tonnes of "e-waste" - defined as any device with an electric cord or battery - were dumped around the globe in 2014 and only an estimated 6.5 million tonnes were taken for recycling, the United Nations University (UNU) said.

Nevada utility NV Energy helped a Las Vegas school district save $2.25 million and avoid 21.4 million KW-h of electricity consumption per year by installing energy-efficient lighting at 152 schools. The project also enabled the school district to earn $790,000 in utility rebates during the 2012 fiscal year

UPS has launched its route optimization software called ORION - this stands for on-road integrated optimization and navigation - which the company expects to save more than 1.5 million gallons of fuel and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by more than 14,000 metric tons by the end of the year. A reduction of just one mile each day per driver over the course of a year saves UPS up to $50 million annually.

The Obama administration is aiming to start changing that. Last week, the President - fresh off of announcing a $4 billion renewable energy fund with private investment partners - has unveiled a set of initiatives to bring increased access to solar energy and solar jobs.   The "Increase Solar Access for All Americans" plan involves private sector investment of $520 million and partnerships with Citigroup, GRID Alternatives, SunEdison and half a dozen other companies as well as several states and cities.

The Naval Air Station (NAS) Oceana deep energy retrofit is a four-phase endeavor that is unprecedented in both size and scope. The project - which kicked off in 2002 and is expected to be completed in 2017 - is projected to reduce energy use by over 40 percent across more than 100 retrofitted buildings, saving the naval base over $6 million in annual energy costs.

For Dow, this natural treatment decision in Seadrift led to some $39 million in initial capital savings and ultimately translated into some $282 million of Net Present Value benefits and counting.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power has now dumped 96 million balls into local reservoirs to reduce evaporation and block sunlight from encouraging algae growth and toxic chemical reactions. The balls are coated with a chemical that blocks ultraviolet light and helps the spheres last as long as 25 years.

Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. new project providing nearly 600 electric charging stations throughout the airport for ground support equipment (GSE) such as baggage tugs, bag ramps and pushback vehicles. Converting the GSE from fossil fuel to electric, each year the project is projected to save $2.8 million in airline fuel costs and 10,000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions - the equivalent of taking 1,900 cars off the road.

China plans to remove over 5 million vehicles from roads this year for failing to meet new fuel standards designed to reduce smog. The plan calls for removing 330,000 cars from Beijing and 660,000 from the surrounding Hebei province.

The commitment is one of several new sustainability initiatives, part of a 500 million Swiss francs ($547 million) program called The Positive Cup. Nespresso says it will invest the money over the next six years to shrink its environmental footprint. Part of this investment will be used to establish a new Sustainable Development Fund.

Now June will be the third month in a row with average carbon dioxide levels above 400 parts per million. Atmospheric concentrations of the greenhouse gas, which helps drive global warming, haven't been this high in somewhere between 800,000 and 15 million years.

the Closed Loop Fund, a budding $100 million effort by a group of large companies to invest in recycling infrastructure and, in the process, put more recycled materials into manufacturing supply chains. Along the way, it aims to give a boost to recycling in the United States at a time when rates are leveling off but the demand for recycled feedstocks is picking up.

The Nature Conservancy and Harley-Davidson are partnering with a commitment to plant 50 million trees worldwide by 2025.

The Department of Agriculture is awarding more than $5.6 million in grant payments to 220 advanced-biofuel companies under its Advanced Biofuel Payment Program. The agency is also handing out $4 million in grants to bioenergy projects under its National Institute of Food and Agriculture. The grants are part of the Obama administration's "all-of-the-above" approach to U.S. energy policy, said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.

Thanks to a study published today in the journal Science, we finally have an estimate. Are you sitting down? Humans release between 5.3 million and 14 million tons of plastic into the ocean annually.

Nearly every piece of plastic still exists on Earth, regardless of whether it's been recycled, broken down into microscopic bits or discarded in the ocean. And the world keeps producing more of the material -- creating 288 million metric tons of it in 2012. About 4.8 to 12.7 million metric tons of it end up in the oceans in 2010, according to a new estimate published in the journal Science.

Ford Motor Company has begun installing 25,000 new LED fixtures to replace traditional high-intensity discharge and fluorescent lights, at its manufacturing facilities across the globe. The new fixtures, valued at over $25 million, are expected to reduce Ford's energy use at manufacturing facilities by 56 million kilowatt-hours annually - enough to power more than 6,000 average-sized homes per year.

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

Stand For Trees, a collaboration led by non-profit CodeREDD, is running a first-of-its kind consumer campaign that enables everyone - as opposed to just companies - to purchase verified carbon offsets. What's most remarkable about this is the unprecedented success of the main engagement tool the campaign is relying on - a video by social media celebrity Prince Ea, entitled Dear Future Generations: Sorry. It broke the record for most viral environmental campaign to date with more than 20 million views in its first 24 hours and over 50 million views in the first week. There could hardly be a better example of mainstreaming an important sustainability message. 

Increasing the recycling rate to 100 percent industry-wide could generate an estimated $10 billion in cost savings and natural capital benefits, according to Trucost. For example, creating better closed-loop processes for reusing gold would have a bottom-line benefit of almost $100 million compared with $14.6 million at current recovery levels, according to the Trucost data.