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Hershey has redesigned its display cases in such a way that by 2025, they will have reduced packaging material by 25 million pounds, the company says. The new display case is a one-piece design with no cover packaging. It also eliminates the center divider. With these and other changes, the cases use 32% less material, Hershey says. The cases also use about 62% less time to open and set up.

"The effect of long-term warming is to make it harder to count on snowmelt runoff in wet times," said David S. Gutzler, a climate scientist at the University of New Mexico. "And it makes the dry times much harder than they used to be."

A group of 24 companies - including Apple, Facebook, Google, HPE, Ingersoll Rand, Johnson Controls, Microsoft, Tiffany & Co, Unilever, and VF Corporation - signed a statement urging President Trump to "keep the United States in the Paris Agreement on climate change for the good of the U.S. economy." The statement was featured as a full-page advertisement in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and New York Post.

A coalition of European energy companies from 26 European Union member nations have jointly pledged to phase out investments in new coal power plants after 2020. Poland and Greece are the only EU nations absent from the pledge.

Marriott International launched Serve 360, a sustainability and social impact platform designed to "guide the company's commitment and deliver positive results" across four priority areas: communities, responsible operations, workplace readiness and access to opportunity, and human rights. As part of Serve 360, the company announced new 2025 sustainability and social impact commitments including targets to reduce water use by 15%, carbon by 30%, waste by 45%, food waste by 50%, and more.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. announced plans to invest $900,000 in sustainable infrastructure projects across the City of Detroit. The firm will also retrofit over 70% of its Detroit-based Chase branches with LED lights and new building management systems. https://www.jpmorganchase.com/corporate/news/pr/jpmc-announces-investments-to-support-detroit-economic-recovery.htm

Nike on Friday announced two efforts to reduce its environmental footprint and enable business growth: a collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Climate CoLab to bring innovation in materials to the forefront of the climate conversation, and a commitment to reach 100-percent renewable energy in company-owned and operated facilities by 2025.

Honda launched its "Green Path" approach-a suite of initiatives to reduce the total life-cycle environmental impact of its products and operations in North America. Notable initiatives include pledging to reduce its total GHG emissions by 50% from 2000 levels by 2050, investing $210 million in a paint facility to cut CO2 emissions in the painting process by 18% and reduce volatile organic compounds (VOCs) by 66%, and more.

National Geographic is dedicating its television programming to climate change topics for an entire week beginning October 30, in 171 countries and 45 languages. The programming will include the second season premiere of climate change series "Years of Living Dangerously," which explores a range of climate change topics through the eyes of celebrity correspondents. In addition, National Geographic's week of programming will feature Leonardo DiCaprio's new climate change documentary "Before the Flood."

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.

The EPA finalized the first set of standards to reduce methane emissions from new and existing sources in the oil and gas sector, strengthening the United States' pledge to cut methane emissions from the sector by up to 45% from 2012 levels by 2025

General Motors has turned trash into cash - to the tune of $1 billion in new revenue streams from recycling and reuse. Read more: http://www.environmentalleader.com/2016/05/12/how-gm-generates-1-billion-from-recycling-reusing-waste-streams/#ixzz49Wo7d1VD

Thirty-one New York City businesses, including ABC Disney, Whole Foods and Anheuser-Busch, have committed to divert at least 50 percent of their waste from landfill and incineration by mid-June, as part of mayor Bill de Blasio's Zero Waste Challenge.

A new energy market analysis shows the average cost of electricity from renewables is already lower than from fossil fuels, writes Alex Kirby. And as renewables eat deeper into the 'market share' of coal and gas power plants, so the entire economics of fossil fuel power generation will unravel.

Using fracking wastewater to de-ice roads in New York City will likely soon be illegal, following a City Council vote to ban the practice. Fracking wastewater has a high brine content, which makes it useful in salinating roads icy roads. The waste also contains benzene, which the EPA says is a human carcinogen.

Last month, the World Green Building Council announced its ambitious new project, Advancing Net Zero, which aims to make all buildings net zero by 2050. Here are five companies that are providing first-rate technology, building products and services that have been and will continue to be important tools for the evolution of net zero buildings.

Plastic Soup Foundation (PSF), a Dutch nonprofit, and New York-based Parley for the Oceans announced Tuesday a partnership to tackle the issue of microfiber pollution and to create a global alliance of companies, governments, NGOs and scientists. Microfibers - tiny, often synthetic threads shed from laundry, industrial clothing manufacturing and fishing nets - have been found in alarming numbers in recent studies of microplastic pollution.

Developer FivePoint has a new plan to reduce carbon emissions at its proposed $12.7 billion master-planned community in California's Los Angeles County after a court blocked the project on environmental grounds. The company hopes to begin construction in 2018 and will implement zero-net-energy construction when it builds the 21,500 homes, each of which will have a charging station for electric vehicle.

Levels of CO2 in the atmosphere have surged past an important threshold and may not dip below it for "many generations." The 400 parts per million benchmark was broken globally for the first time in recorded history in 2015. But according to the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), 2016 will likely be the first full year to exceed the mark.

Carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, is present at 400 parts per million for the first time ever -- a level that's 44% greater than CO2 levels prior to the Industrial Revolution, says a World Meteorological Organization report. Improvements in the near future could reduce CO2 levels by the 2060s, says WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas.

The 2016 results from the Global Canopy Programme's 'Forest 500' have been released, and they don't bring good news. The deforestation policy analysis of the world's most influential powerbrokers, including companies, financial institutions, and countries, reveals that targets for 2020 and 2030 are unlikely to be met at the current rate of progress. 57 percent of companies in the Forest 500 have either weak policies or no policies at all.