TD Bank Group (TD) today announced a set of initiatives to advance the low-carbon economy of the future.

Detroit’s urban garden scene continues to grow in impact, bringing neighbors together and supporting the underprivileged with access to healthy produce. General Motors contributed a small part in fueling this movement through the donation of its steel shipping crates repurposed as raised garden beds. Five years later, 2,000 of the automaker’s crates are home to plantings in 33 different gardens.

It’s not game over for humanity and climate change; it’s game on.

Whirlpool Corporation employees at the KitchenAid Plant in Greenville, Ohio donated more than $400,000 to United Way agencies in the area.

Brian Clay is used to sending care packages to faraway places for his Green Beret son-in-law, Tripp White. In the past six years, his family has sent packages to Afghanistan and Africa, and his teammates at Duke Energy’s Harris Nuclear Plant have pitched in, too. But this year, Clay said, his teammates surpassed all of his expectations.

Fernando Icaza is studying Industrial and Systems Engineering at Georgia Tech's H. Milton Stewart School. He participated in the Carbon Reduction Challenge, at the Ray C. Anderson Center for Sustainable Business at the Georgia Tech Scheller College of Business, funded by a grant from the Ray C. Anderson Foundation's NextGen Committee and the Scheller College Dean's Innovation Fund. The Challenge is an affiliated project of the Georgia Tech Center for Serve-Learn-Sustain.

"I was really interested in exploring Caltech, specifically the Lewis lab’s work on solar fuel. That particular project really drew me to apply to the Program."

Tis the season to reflect, refresh and recharge as 2017 comes to a close. While this year has certainly had its ups and downs, the Common Impact team is grateful for the passion and dedication of our partners who continue to drive our mission forward. As we head into the last week of the year, we spent some time reflecting on (and discovering!) what truly motivates us to do the work we do every day to strengthen the communities in which we live and work. Below you will find our staff's personal missions statements, which reveal what drives us both personally and professionally.

We’ve just published a year-end recap of our corporate responsibility efforts at Wendy’s. Having now done this twice, it’s fair to say this is a practice we will follow on at least an annual basis. It was a busy year with encouraging progress on several fronts, and we spent a lot of time working on sustainable food issues related to the livestock in our supply chain.

For the first time since 2009, more consumers say they have punished companies for their behavior (28%) rather than rewarded them (26%), and the number of those who are punishing brands is up by 9% since 2013.