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The tech giant Tuesday announced a plan with First Solar to power all California operations with the sun, potentially becoming the budding renewable energy sector's biggest commercial deal ever.

The tech giant Tuesday announced a plan with First Solar to power all California operations with the sun, potentially becoming the budding renewable energy sector's biggest commercial deal ever.

Darden Restaurants has plenty of problems, but it's doing well with its sustainability goals, writes Mike Hower. The Olive Garden parent company has successfully curbed per-restaurant energy and water use, saving the company $25 million since 2008

Private equity firm KKR announced that Del Monte, Dollar General, Sealy, and the 24 other companies in its Green Portfolio Program have collectively avoided more than 2.3 million metric tons of GHG emissions from 2008 to 2013, generating $1.2 billion in new savings and revenues. Companies in the Green Portfolio Program agree to assess, measure, and optimize their environmental performance in ways that improve their businesses.

General Motors' Kokomo Operations - which is landfill-free and has achieved a water reduction of 4 million gallons annually - is now a member of the Indiana Environmental Stewardship Program.

Cascades, which produces packaging and tissue products composed mainly of recycled fibers, has invested $26 million in a new chemical-free technology at its Norampac - Cabano facility

The atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases hit a record last year, according to the World Meteorological Organization. The concentration of carbon dioxide climbed to 397.7 parts per million, and the warming effect of greenhouse gases rose 36% between 1990 and 2014, the group said

General Electric Aviation will invest more than $200 million to construct two factories that will mass-produce silicon carbide (SiC) materials used to manufacture ceramic matrix composite components (CMCs) for jet engines and land-based gas turbines. The factories will be built adjacent to one another on 100 acres in Huntsville, Alabama.

Martin von Hildebrand, founder of the Fundacion Gaia Amazonas, is working to establish an ecological corridor protecting 333 million acres of rain forest stretching from Colombia to the Brazilian coast. That will involve finding ways to work with the loggers, miners and farmers already active in the area, he says. "We have to look at those areas where there already is something like oil, or like agriculture, or like cattle ranching and approach it from a sustainable point of view," he explains. 

The Christmas gifts have been delivered, and Secret Santa is done. Now, the work begins for Optoro, a start-up company that aims to reduce the financial and environmental costs of another great holiday tradition: returns. Little known to shoppers, however, is that a majority of returned items never make it back to retailers' shelves. Instead, the items wind their way through liquidators, wholesalers and resellers, many of the purchases ending up in landfills. According to some estimates, as much as two million tons of returned items - most of it undamaged merchandise - are thrown away each year, enough to fill over 200,000 garbage trucks.

Retailers Bed Bath & Beyond, Nordstrom, JC Penney and Backcountry.com have been fined $1.3 million by the Federal Trade Commission for misleading environmental claims.

Millions of "invisible environmentalists" sift through trash for recyclable material. A rapidly growing program now provides them a living wage. 

Hilton Worldwide's environmental management has saved the hotel chain $550 million since 2009, according to the company's latest sustainability report.

The global paradox that a third of all food grown and produced never makes it into people's mouths - even as 800 million people suffer from hunger - finally may be getting the attention it deserves. Thirty leaders from business, government and foundations gathered in Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum vowed Thursday to work to cut food waste in half in the next 15 years.

Could the health and environmental benefits of taxes on sugary drinks and carbon-intensive foods outweigh the out-of-pocket costs? New research from Oxford University and the University of Reading suggests that is indeed the case. A study found that a combination of a sugar tax on soft drinks and a food-based carbon tax in the United Kingdom could raise £3.6 billion in revenue, reduce carbon emissions by 19 million tonnes, and increase life expectancy.

President Obama's budget includes almost $260 million to fund a water innovation strategy, which the White House says will boost water sustainability and reduce the price and energy costs of new water supply technology.

France is moving forward with a "Positive Energy" initiative to add solar panels to 621 miles of road. The panels are glued onto the roadway and can handle the weight of six-axle vehicles. This stretch of road could collect enough energy for 5 million people. A Dutch company has already used solar panels on 328 feet of road in Holland.

Texas Wesleyan University has installed a co-generation system called the Combined Heat and Power Plant that can produce its own energy. Powered by natural gas, the system captures waste heat from the engine and exhaust and converts that to power. The project is projected to save the university $377,000 a year and is part of a $6.2 million energy project.

Toyota saved more than 54 million gallons of water in North America during fiscal year 2015 through reduce, reuse and recycle efforts, according to its latest North American Environmental Report.

Millions of trees are disappearing every year into the clothing on our backs. They're being felled to manufacture dissolving pulp, a key ingredient for fabrics such as rayon/viscose, modal and lyocell. Even worse, much of that pulp is wasted. That revelation was the impetus behind an apparel industry campaign created both to raise awareness of this issue and to nip it in the bud. More than two dozen fashion and apparel companies - including retailers and producers - are involved with the "Fashion Loved by Forest" initiative. They include Eileen Fisher, H&M, Levi Strauss, Lululemon Athletica, Marks & Spencer, Patagonia and Prana.

The water, energy, packaging and waste-reduction initiatives have been tallied up, and PepsiCo, Inc. asserts that its environmental sustainability initiatives have saved the company more than $375 million since its goals were established in 2010.