Levi's Water<Less jeans collection, designed to reduce water used in the finishing process by up to 96 percent, has saved over 770 million liters of water since its launch in 2011, the company announced.

Panasonic has confirmed that it is planning to provide staff working in Chinese cities a salary premium to compensate them for the effects of the country's escalating smog crisis.

Mars will require all of its suppliers to provide palm oil from traceable sources by the end of 2015. The company already purchases 100% sustainable palm oil as certified by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil.

Each year, Future 500 releases a Top 10 list of what we view are the most pressing and timely stakeholder issues of the year ahead. Check out our video this year to learn more about these key stakeholder concerns that impact both the corporate sector and activist community.

Climate change could force Chipotle to temporarily stop serving guacamole, the fast-food chain warned in a recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The notification, which Chipotle described as a "routine financial disclosure," notes that climate-induced freezes and droughts can take a severe toll on food-based supply chains, leading to price spikes and product shortages

Golden Agri Resources (GAR) which produces an estimated 5 percent of the world's palm oil, made a significant announcement in a filing to the Singapore Stock Exchange - confirming it is committed to zero deforestation throughout its entire supply chain

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

The approval by the government of Chile of the largest Marine Protected Area (MPA) in continental Chile is a boost to conservation efforts for blue whales and dolphins

Apple's labor practices are under attack by China Labor Watch and Green America, who contend the company makes its iPhones with a hazardous mix of chemicals that threaten the health of factory workers assembling the devices in China

Greenpeace today reveals the result of a yearlong investigation showing P&G is sourcing palm oil from companies connected to widespread forest devastation. Its sourcing policies also expose its supply chain to forest fires and habitat destruction that is further pushing the Sumatran tiger to the edge of extinction.

Fashionistas now, for the first time, can see beyond clothing labels with the Fair Trace Tool developed by my company, fair trade fashion retailer INDIGENOUS along with Worldways Social Media. This new tool, a QR code on hang-tags, offers transparency throughout the garment's supply chain, including a glimpse of the artisans who actually made it and insight into the product's social impact. The content is delivered in text, video and animated map format.

Costa Rica's left-wing opposition looks set to win next month's national elections, and party leaders say one of their first moves would be to cancel the country's pledge to achieve carbon neutrality by 2021. That goal, which is markedly more ambitious than any other country's carbon-reduction target, is no longer attainable, officials say. "We don't think it would be possible to reach carbon neutrality by 2021, because the most important tasks to reduce emissions in the country are yet to be done," said opposition environmental adviser Patricia Madrigal.

Green cleaning products are no longer a niche interest, with many consumers willing to pay a little extra to pick up chemical-free or otherwise eco-friendly cleaning products, writes Stephen Ashkin. That shift is partly due to the rise of eco-labels and certification programs, which helped cleaning companies slice through the complexities of green chemistry. "With the advent of certification, standards and ecolabels, buyers have been given more tools to choose appropriate products," Ashkin explains.

IF HUMANITY is to avoid dangerous climate change, we need to capture hundreds of billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide. But what to do with it all? There is no shortage of places to bury it (see "Trailblazing power plant is first to bury its carbon"), but we can at least put some of it to good use. A few start-up companies view CO2 as a resource rather than a waste product. They are using CO2 as the raw material for making products including superglue and fertiliser.

The world's most popular cheap cooking oil is becoming less affordable. Palm oil prices are up 10% since the start of the year, and closer to 16% since the end of January, when they dropped to $765 per tonne ($843 per ton). The stuff hasn't been this expensive since September of 2012.

Americans renew their relationship with paper, ditching the cheap stuff for reading news to buy expensive stock for photo-based cards and albums.

Starbucks opened a new store yesterday at Disneyland Resort in California as an effort to introduce a series of environmentally-friendly coffee shops worldwide. Located at Downtown Disney in Anaheim, the new LEED-certified shop was built totally from reclaimed wood with a large yard surrounded by a green wall with more than 1,000 plants. Customers will experience an interactive environment created by a 10-foot video installation with high technology and nice design.

CertiChem and its founder, George Bittner, who is also a professor of neurobiology at the University of Texas-Austin, had recently coauthored a paper in the NIH journal Environmental Health Perspectives. It reported that "almost all" commercially available plastics that were tested leached synthetic estrogens-even when they weren't exposed to conditions known to unlock potentially harmful chemicals, such as the heat of a microwave, the steam of a dishwasher, or the sun's ultraviolet rays. According to Bittner's research, some BPA-free products actually released synthetic estrogens that were more potent than BPA.

BCC Research reports the global market for anaerobic digestors and landfill gas equipment was estimated at nearly $4.5 billion for 2013. Its study, Waste-Derived Biogas: Global Markets for Anaerobic Digestion Equipment, projects the market to grow to $7 billion by 2018, and register a five-year compound annual growth rate of 9.4 percent 2013 to 2018.

The global volume of e-waste generated is expected to reach 93.5 million tons in 2016 from 41.5 million tons in 2011 at a compound annual growth rate of 17.6 percent from 2011 to 2016, according to a new report from Marketsandmarkets.