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On Tuesday, Whole Foods WFM -1.91% said that it planned a huge project to cover nearly one-fourth of its stores with solar panels. After construction is complete, Whole Foods says it could be among the top 25 biggest commercial U.S. solar suppliers alongside Walmart WMT -0.08% , Walgreens WBA -0.41% , and Target TGT 0.59% .

Whole Foods launched the Responsibly Grown rating system, which evaluates produce based on environmental and health impacts. Products will carry a "good," "better," or "best" label based on their rating.

Target, Wal-Mart and Whole Foods Market are leading retailers in the race to provide safer chemicals in products.

Whole Foods, Bon Appétit and Dickinson College are among the organizations saving money by recycling food waste, the New York Times reports.

A big retailer, a scrappy startup and a third-party fair trade certifier weigh in on sourcing organic, fair trade, eco-friendly flowers.

Starting this month, the big box giant aims to drive down the price of organic food nationwide with its new in-house line of 100 or so products in exclusive partnership with Wild Oats, a pioneering health brand of the 1980s. Walmart's new Wild Oats organic products - including kitchen cupboard staples like olive oil and black beans - will cost about 25 percent less than those sold by competitors, based on price comparisons of 26 national brands.

Whole Foods is the No. 1 grocer in terms of seafood sustainability this year, according to Greenpeace's 2015 Carting Away the Oceans report. The list honors stores that harvest or raise their fish offerings with minimal environmental harm. Rounding out the top five were Wegmans, Hy-Vee, Safeway and Target. 

A growing number of billion-dollar companies are showing that sustainability can be a real driver of profits, writes Freya Williams. Companies such as Tesla, Chipotle Mexican Grill, IKEA, Nike and Whole Foods Market are making serious money through eco-friendly business models. "The green giants are turning a strategy of sustainability or social good into a billion-dollar business proposition, and profiting in the process," Williams explains

Clean Edge recently released a new benchmarking index of corporations that take the lead in clean energy. The list of Corporate Clean Energy Leaders includes more than a dozen members of RMI's BRC, who make up nearly half Clean Edge's inaugural list.

Anheuser Busch, the Walt Disney Company's ABC, and Whole Foods Market are among more than 30 New York City businesses that have pledged to halve the amount of waste they send to landfills by June 2016. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio aims to reduce the city's waste output by 90% by 2030.

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.

South Korea has been using radio frequency identification (RFID) technology and a 'pay-as-you-waste' system to help cut back on food waste. Meanwhile, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced the Mayor's Zero Waste Challenge as part of the city's plan to send zero waste to landfill by 2030. Thirty-one businesses, including Disney, Anheuser-Busch, Citi Field, Etsy, Whole Foods, and more, have committed to divert at least 50 percent of their waste from landfill and incineration.

Dozens of major companies including ABC Disney, Whole Foods and Anheuser-Busch with offices in New York City have diverted at least half of their waste from landfills and incineration, responding to Mayor Bill de Blasio's zero waste by 2030 challenge. Read more: http://www.environmentalleader.com/2016/07/13/major-nyc-businesses-cut-waste-50-but-can-they-achieve-zero-waste-by-2030/#ixzz4FZDgXzbr

Bad news for those with a sweet tooth: the absence of pollinators such as bees and butterflies would signal the end of dessert as we know it. Whole Foods Market recently removed all products from an area of the supermarket reliant on the creatures, mirroring past initiatives in the diary aisle and the produce section. The results, seen above in the bakery department for the company's Share the Buzz campaign, are dramatic.

What do tech giants Apple, Google, Intel and Microsoft, retailers Kohl's, Whole Foods and Wal-Mart, the U.S. Energy and Veteran Affairs Departments, and the cities of Houston and Washington, D.C. have in common? According to recently updated data in the Environmental Protection Agency's Green Power Partnership, they are the most prolific users of renewable energy in the United States.

By adding thoughtfully planned and well-timed daylighting fixtures, big-box stores see significant energy savings.

For the seventh year in a row, Intel is at the top of the heap when it comes to commercial buyers of clean energy, according to the Environmental Protection Agency's annual Green Power Partnership report. Kohl's, Microsoft, Whole Foods and Google round out the top five in this year's ranking.

The key global goal of limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius is already beyond reach as negotiators begin planning a 2015 climate treaty, experts say. "There is nothing that can be agreed in 2015 that would be consistent with the 2 degrees," said former United Nations climate chief Yvo de Boer. "The only way that a 2015 agreement can achieve a 2-degree goal is to shut down the whole global economy

In this Yale Environment 360 video, we present the first of a two-part e360 series, "Wasted," on the vexing global problem of food waste. Filmmaker Karim Chrobog visits two cities - Washington, D.C., and Seoul, South Korea - to examine why so much food goes to waste and what can be done about it. Washington, and the U.S. as a whole, has taken only minor steps to reduce this enormous waste and its related human and environmental costs. By contrast, Seoul has adopted innovative programs to minimize the amount of food that ends up going to landfills to rot. 

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.