In the United Kingdom town of York, the Nestle plant that churns out over a billion Kit Kats and 183 million guilt-inducing Aero bar annually has achieved a zero waste milestone four years early.

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Coca-Cola Enterprises has seven areas of focus that determine materiality for its sustainability agenda, and has achieved progress towards its “Commitment 2020” goals where the company believes it can make the most impact. Details are in its 2010 CSR report, issued this week.

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Target announced its corporate responsibility scorecard, with a focus on the environment, education, healthy living, and community work.

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Walmart just just released its 2011 Global Responsibility Report. Waste diversion and renewable energy initiatives that appear within some of the chain’s 8000 or so locations are only a couple of the report’s highlights.

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Last Thursday Walmart announced that it eliminated over 80% of its waste that otherwise would have ended up in landfills across California. The initiative’s success has sparked Walmart to roll out the program across the United States.

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Last week ecoATM received US$14.4 million in a Series A preferred stock offering, led by Coinstar, Inc. and the venture capital firm Claremont Creek Ventures. That same day the company won a National Science Foundation grant, and rounded out its day of success with the securing of its first patent.

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Secure TradeIn, a subsidiary of the leading global recycler and reseller of used cellular phones ReCellular, is prepared for a massive recycling effort thanks to Verizon’s iPhone coup. The company has an “e-cycling” arrangement with Verizon that could pay out as much as US$10 million to consumers who purchase a Verizon iPhone.

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Xerox has saved US$10.2 million this year while it eliminated 2.6 million pounds of waste. Employees at facilities around the world were engaged in a corporate wide “Earth Awards” program that challenged them to leverage innovation as a means to saving the company resources.

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Through a partnership with Parsons, LV’s Soho Store will host a bevy of fashion design students who will make to with those pesky yet valuable scraps and remnants. Students have taken over sections of the Greene Street location, and by today, they will have created elaborate panels that will decorate a party the store is hosting. Assuming that the panels will be auctioned off or given away, the net result will be a little less waste that is hauled to a landfill.

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Silicon Valley-based ECS Refining, in business since 1980, has long addressed the issue of e-waste in California. Now the company, which has been adept at turning trash into treasure, launched Ecollective, a partnership that will start with an operation of 94 e-waste collection points up and down the Golden State. Non-profits, as well as small and medium-sized businesses, are participating in the program through serving as hosted drop-off locations.

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While REI has achieved impressive growth in a difficult economy the last few years, the outdoor clothing and gear firm has also made huge strides on the environmental and social front. Monday’s release of its 2009 Stewardship Report, its fourth, focuses on details, not platitudes.

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Whatever your attitude may be towards Whole Foods, the fact is that the Austin-based company has had an instrumental role in the change of many Americans’ food habits. Once relegated to university towns and neighborhoods with aging beatniks and hippies, “health food stores,” while still around, have given sway to becoming a “consumer experience” that [...]

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IKEA has received a fair share of criticism over the years, but there is evidence that the furniture giant is making improvements on the sustainability front. The company has experimented with renewable energy, is phasing out flame retardants in its furniture, and in Sweden it is making a counterintuitive business move: customers in its home country can now sell the store’s used furniture on IKEA’s Swedish site.

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Waste Management purchased a majority stake in Garick this week. For Garick, the deal will give it the opportunity to expand geographically, giving it access to WM’s customers in even more markets. And while having a greater reach on WM’s coattails is a shot in the arm for Garick, the real winner could be the firm that now has majority ownership.

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One Honolulu City Councilman, Donovan Dela Cruz, introduced a bill that would require building permit applicants to submit plans that would prove the reuse or recycling of 60% of any demolished and dismantled materials.

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Since its founding in 2002, Reuseit.com has grown 1200%, and reported revenues of US$6.2 billion in 2008. As of April 2010, the firm estimates it has saved consumers from disposing over 850 million items.

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Cleveland’s recylcling bins now boast sensors that monitor whether residents are taking their recycling bins to the curb on garbage days. If the blue bin is not taken to the curb on the recycling basis, trash collectors will check out the bins to gauge whether trash is correctly sorted. If it is not, residents get dinged with a $100 fine.

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The plastic bag ban is part of Mexico City’s Plan Verde, which is tackling issues from air pollution to the increase of organic food in the city’s markets. Frustrated with what they insist are the health and environmental problems that result from plastic bags, city leaders figure the ban is just one approach to educate residents about the environment.

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One town in Maine has tripled recycling rates while reducing expenses 50%. Sanford residents implemented a trash metering system that requires residents to pay by the bag for curbside collection. After one month, the 50% decrease in garbage tonnage far exceeded the town manager’s expectations.

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Sunny Delight has reached its 2013 recycling goal three years early; several months ago, the firm’s US and Spain manufacturing plants achieved zero waste. Back in 2007, the company estimated that it sent about 1140 tons of waste to landfills. That number fell more than 50% two years later, and now it is a zero waste operation.

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According to a recent report that SRI Consulting released, countries that have plenty of space but little or no recycling infrastructure should not fret: SRI’s study suggests that disposing such bottles in landfill results in a lower carbon footprint than recycling or incineration.

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The Green Production guide offers its users a searchable database of vendors with information about their green products, services, their production experience, and locations they serve.

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Last week, New Jersey-based TD Bank, a subsidiary of the eponymous Canadian banking giant, announced that it was implementing a closed loop system for the companies’ operations in the United States and Canada.

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Green Mountain, which practiced and preached sustainability before many of use could pronounce that word, has become the target of critics who say that the company’s growth, fueled mostly by coffee pods or K-Cups, threatens to sully its reputation.

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The food processing giant Del Monte has announced the following goals it wishes to achieve by 2016, including reducing the amount of solid waste from its manufacturing, warehousing, and research & development facilities by 75% in 2016.

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As the largest packaged food company in America, Kraft Foods has put there trademark on everything from Cool Whip to Shake’N Bake to Nutter Butters. Most recently though Kraft has suprisingly marked itself as a pioneer in the reduction of manufacturing waste. This $50 Billion dollar conglomerate has cut its waste stream by 30 percent and now recycles or reuses 90 percent of its waste. On top of this 9 of its plants sent zero waste to landfills.

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