Environment

August is National Water Quality Month in the United States, and Yum! Brands is taking time to reflect on the role of restaurants in preserving and promoting water quality.

The Nat Geo Mundo Explorer competition, a joint effort between DIRECTV and 21st Century Fox's Nat Geo Mundo channel, launched in January as a way to expand opportunities for young people to participate in National Geographic Student Expeditions. The program matches student groups with a National Geographic Explorer, who then guides the students through original research and photography projects at one of more than 40 locations across the globe. Nat Geo Mundo Explorer offered full scholarships to the Student Expeditions program and allowed the winners to select any of the available trips.

Managing our solid waste and finding ways to minimize it remains a focus at all Sappi’s North American mills.

For many years, a troubling trend has been preoccupying botanists and scientists. Honey bees are disappearing or dying — a phenomenon known as Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). Last year alone, 44% of the bee colonies in the U.S. disappeared. While CCD is indeed bad for honey bees, a larger problem looms for humans. Approximately one in every three mouthfuls of food in our diet is either directly or indirectly impacted by honey bees.

Next up in our series about key performance indicators: emissions.

General Motors created its first Student Sustainability Advisory Council this year to begin a new dialogue on sustainability. Composed of five graduate students from MIT, Penn State, Georgia Tech, University of Michigan and Stanford, the council provides fresh perspectives on sustainability at GM.

General Motors and the U.S. Army Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center (TARDEC) will reveal a Chevrolet Colorado-based fuel cell electric vehicle in October at the fall meeting of the Association of the United States Army (AUSA) in Washington, D.C.

The UPS Foundation, which leads the global citizenship programs for UPS (NYSE: UPS), announced it will award more than $2.6 million in grants to nonprofit organizations focused on environmental sustainability initiatives. This includes a significant grant to twenty-five year partner, The Nature Conservancy, a global organization that works to preserve ecologically important land and water resources through conservation.