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  General Mills announced plans to source 100% of its eggs from cage-free operations in the United States

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.

For nearly a century, Californians have drained an incredible amount of water from the ground to grow crops and water landscaping. It is not sustainable. The water has not returned. The result is a sinking state. Here are some startling facts about California's groundwater depletion:

California legislators are considering tough emissions proposals that would double buildings' energy efficiency, require 50% renewable energy use by state utilities and halve gasoline consumption by 2030. The oil industry is launching a major PR offensive to derail the effort, but Gov. Jerry Brown says he's determined to implement the policies. "It's absolutely necessary if we are to have any chance of stopping potentially catastrophic changes to our climate system," he said. 

Food and commodities giant ADM, which has reached over US$80 billion in revenues, says it will develop a no-deforestation policy in a move to source soy and palm oil more responsibly. The change occurred after a shareholder proposal, submitted by Green Century Capital Management and the New York State Common Retirement Fund, requested that ADM set quantitative goals for a reduction in supply chain impacts from deforestation....

China is building ecocities in droves. Dozens of these green-branded, new frontiers of urbanism are already in an advanced state of development, and upwards of 200 more are on the way. In fact, over 80 per cent of all prefecture level cities in the country (the administrative division below "province") have at least one ecocity project in the works. Over the coming decades, it has been estimated, 50 per cent of China's new urban developments will be stamped with labels such as "eco," "green," "low carbon," or "smart".

By 2017, the global volume of discarded refrigerators, TVs, cellphones, computers, monitors and other electronic waste will weigh almost as much as 200 Empire State Buildings, a new report predicts.

Leaders of the Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club, Greenpeace, and 16 other organizations sent an open letter urging the Green Building Initiative (GBI) to strengthen its Green Globes standard or state more explicitly that their standard is less rigorous than LEED or Living Building Challenge ones. The letter also urged GBI to stop attacking the credibility of LEED standards.

Weber State University has saved $1.4 million by reducing energy consumption since 2013, following the purchase of a system enabling real-time data at the sub-meter level for its entire portfolio of energy systems and using Lucid's BuildingOS to make performance data instantly accessible.

FedEx Ground Package System allegedly violated California's hazardous waste control laws more than 1,500 times, according to a civil complained filed by the state Department of Toxic Substances Control.

Ritz cheese and cracker snack packaging, paint color and yellow spray paint have the highest levels of the banned substance polychlorinated biphenyl among products tested, according to a report released Thursday by the Washington State Department of Ecology.

The most recent corporation to join the growing movement toward deforestation-free palm oil sourcing is ConAgra, whose brands, the company stated, can be found in 99 percent of American households. 

ConAgra Foods is the latest food giant to agree to eliminate any palm oil supplier engaged in deforestation. The company made the commitment in response to a shareholder proposal filed by Green Century Capital Management and the New York State Common Retirement Fund.

New research points to more bad news for the state of China's water supply, as its booming economy continues to heap pressure on natural resources, according to scientists.

North Carolina State University, Chapman University in California, Coca-Cola Enterprises in the Netherlands and ISS, a commercial facilities service provider, are just a few of the institutions that have made the switch to chemical-free cleaning

Californians aren't doing enough to reduce their water use, despite being caught up in a years-long drought, writes the editorial board of The New York Times. "The state must focus on longer-term policies that encourage people to alter their lifestyles and businesses to change how they operate," the board writes

A new study by scientists from NASA and the University of California, Irvine, has found that over 75 percent of the water loss in the drought-stricken Colorado River Basin since late 2004 came from underground resources. The extent of groundwater loss may pose a greater threat to the water supply of the western United States than previously thought.

The United States is launching an effort to save some of its busiest workers: honey bees.

Building the Keystone XL pipeline could lead to as much as four times more greenhouse gas emissions than the State Department has estimated for the controversial project, according to a new study published in Nature Climate Change that relies on different calculations about oil consumption. 

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.