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Apple, Walmart, CVS, Ikea, Whole Foods Market, and Target scored the highest in a group's report card on reducing toxic chemicals in consumer products.

The World Wildlife Fund released its Soy Scorecard, which uses cultivation, land use, and workers' rights data to score the practices of 133 European companies in the soy industry.

The Paris climate agreement will likely be ratified on Earth Day, when it will be signed by more than 130 nations, the UN said on Friday. Only 55 signatures are needed to ratify the document. If approved, the climate accord is expected to encourage countries to curb their greenhouse gas emissions, ultimately holding global warming to an increase of no more than 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, through the next two decades.

On Friday, a group of children suing the government for inaction on climate change scored a major victory, as a judge ruled that the Washington State Department of Ecology must deliver an emissions reduction rule by the end of this year. That decision follows another major win in mid-April, when an Oregon judge ruled that a similar lawsuit could go forward despite opposition from the fossil fuel industry.

A coalition of investors concerned about the lack of reported progress in mitigating the risks associated with hydraulic fracturing operations have submitted shareholder resolutions targeting organizations that received failing scores in a recently-released report. Read more: Fracturing and drilling companies "owe" investors disclosure - FierceEnergy http://www.fierceenergy.com/story/fracturing-and-drilling-companies-owe-investors-disclosure/2014-02-11#ixzz2tFdqgahc Subscribe at FierceEnergy

America's cities are succeeding in curbing air pollution, according to data from NASA's Aura satellite. New York City has seen a 32% decrease in nitrogen dioxide since 2005, Atlanta's levels fell by 42%, and Denver scored a 22% decrease.

The 17 Global Goals (also known as the Sustainable Development Goals or SDGs) launched late last month by the United Nations (UN) aim to achieve three main objectives in the next 15 years: end extreme poverty; fight inequality and injustice; and tackle climate change. Since the launch, various companies and leaders have pledged to do their part to achieve the goals; now, the latest push is to build worldwide public awareness of the goals through various efforts to "tell everyone" (#TellEveryone), including support from scores of celebrities:

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.

Levi Strauss and the International Finance Corporation (IFC) of the World Bank launched a new program to reward garment suppliers in developing countries based on their environmental, health, safety, and labor performance. The IFC will offer better loan terms to garment manufacturers that score higher on a supplier sustainability assessment developed by Levi Strauss.

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

There are a projected $35 million in cost savings over the initial contract term through 2023. Industrial customers benefit from considerable cost savings using reclaimed water by lowering operating costs of chemicals and labor.

Some of the Internet's biggest names are making impressive strides to reduce the carbon footprint of the cloud, says Greenpeace. Yet as the world's appetite for data expands, Twitter and Amazon Web Services are bringing up the rear.