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H&M has negotiated agreements this year that make the Sweden-based fast-fashion retailer the sole customer of two factories in Bangladesh and a third in Cambodia, a move designed to give the retailer more control over working conditions and wages for the people who make its clothes. "We see these a little like test centers where we can try out different things that we can then push out on a larger scale in the entire supply chain," said social sustainability manager Anna Gedda

Dell has helped developed an e-waste model for developing countries and opened East Africa's first large-scale e-waste recycling hub.

The U.S. could reduce electricity costs by $7.68 billion per year by installing 54 gigawatts of offshore wind power, according to a study supported by the Department of Energy. The goal of the National Offshore Wind Energy Grid Interconnection Study was "to identify and help address the market barriers to the large-scale introduction of offshore wind energy into the U.S. energy portfolio," according to its authors. The report said offshore wind power could be especially useful in densely populated coastal areas

If the global business community is to thrive in the long term - and carry us to that flourishing future we are trying to imagine and help build - it needs to continue to scale up the ambition and influence of its efforts. That's much easier said than done, of course, though we are seeing a number of encouraging trends within the Sustainable Brands community that, while still nascent, are promising to deliver a lot of value for years to come. 

At the World Travel & Tourism Council 2015 Global Summit in Madrid this week, the NGO Sustainable Travel International unveiled an industry-wide campaign entitled "10 Million Better," to monitor and scale up social and environmental benefits from travel and tourism

The proposed Pebble Mine in southwestern Alaska is a project of almost unfathomable scale. The Pebble Limited Partnership intends to excavate a thick layer of ore - nearly a mile deep in places - containing an estimated 81 billion pounds of copper, 5.6 billion pounds of molybdenum, and 107 million ounces of gold. The mine would cover 28 square miles and require the construction of the world's largest earthen dam - 700 feet high and several miles long - to hold back a 10-square-mile containment pond filled with up to 2.5 billion tons of sulfide-laden mine waste. All this would be built not only in an active seismic region, but also in one of the most unspoiled and breathtaking places on the planet - the headwaters of Bristol Bay, home to the world's most productive salmon fishery. Composed of tundra plain, mountain ranges, hundreds of rivers, and thousands of lakes, the greater Bristol Bay region encompasses five national parks and wildlife refuges, and one of the largest state parks in the U.S.

Belize just redefined marine conservation, entrusting its fishermen with a nationwide system of multi-species fishing rights for all its coastal fishing waters.

A new technology called bio-energy with carbon capture and storage, or BECCS, could potentially eliminate the equivalent of China's total carbon emissions from the planet's atmosphere, dramatically slowing the rate of climate change, according to a draft U.N. report. The system, which involves capturing and burying carbon emissions from burning biomass, has not yet been tested at scale but is increasingly seen as "an essential component" of any effort to tackle climate change, the report notes.

Over five trillion pieces of plastic are floating in our oceans says most comprehensive study to date on plastic pollution around the world

Thanks to the enormous utility-scale solar plants that now dot the west, solar should be supplying 1% of US electricity by the end of this year, says Pete Danko at Breaking Energy.

a campaign called Behind the Brands, led by Oxfam International, an advocacy organization dedicated to fighting poverty, is trying to make the inner workings of the 10 biggest food companies in the world more visible. Oxfam's goal is to nudge them by scoring them on a scale of 1 to 10 on a whole host of fronts, from worker rights to climate change.

Truly committed companies have shortened their supply chains and focused on domestic sourcing. Bon Appétit is a great example. Their Fish to Fork program goes beyond a purchase commitment on paper to getting in the trenches to source fish that meets their corporate values. That means buying fish that is low on the trophic scale, meets their definition of "local" (both in the number of miles out to sea and across land that fish travels) and favors small boat operators.

While 2014 ushered in big breakthroughs in fields from solar energy to smart cities, 2015 will present a crossroads for larger-scale sustainability progress.

Efforts are underway to develop plans for cleaning up the world's marine garbage patches, but the scale of the problem makes conventional cleanup technologies impractical. What's really needed is a change in attitude among the people producing the waste in the first place, writes Anja Krieger. "Redefining what kinds of plastic products we really need, and how to regulate, use and dispose of them, will be at the core of the answer," she argues.

The Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition released its 2015 Solar Scorecard, a ranking that scores solar PV module manufacturers on a scale of 0-100 points based on their environmental, sustainability, and social justice factors. The 5 companies recognized as industry leaders included the following:  1. SunPower 2. SolarWorld 3. Trina 4. REC 5. Yingli

the town of Corpus Christi, Texas, may be implementing what it believes will be a solution: offering large-scale industrial companies a $0.25 drought surcharge exemption fee.

Billed as a planetary health diet for both the Earth and its people, the set of guidelines put forward by the EAT-Lancet Commission gun for nothing short of a "Great Food Transformation," something they say would feed 10 billion people, save lives and avoid large-scale environmental destruction.

P&G has pledged to embrace recycling and reclamation processes for about 5 billion liters of the water it uses annually for manufacturing, which amounts to about 10 percent of current consumption. The company is also ramping up its plans to tackle another area for which there are few solutions today: developing and scaling the recycling infrastructure for soiled disposable baby diapers, feminine sanitary napkins and adult incontinence napkins.

New recycling technology will allow paint to be recycled cost effectively and on a large scale, according to UK design company Seymourpowell, working with Dulux paint-brand owner AkzoNobel and Newlife Paints to create this technology.

The Nigerian Government has spoken of its plans to seriously scale-up its green finance initiatives over the coming year.