The human rights lawyer Amal Clooney has partnered with 100 Lives, a new global initiative that supports an annual scholarship for young women from Lebanon to pursue studies at the United World College Dilijan in Armenia.

Food waste is a growing scandal which now has the public’s full attention. In the United States and much of Western Europe, food scraps constitute around 19% of the waste dumped in landfills, where it ends up rotting and producing methane, a greenhouse gas. This is not only undesirable in terms of sustainability and environmental impact but costly for food retailers paying high disposal costs.

As I stood in front of my booth at the Net Impact Conference Expo, I watched eager MBA students stride between tables. These aren’t your typical MBA students. They’re not interested in climbing the corporate ladder or the highest-paying careers. These MBAs want to use their degrees to create a better world.

“In the financial service sector, environmental sustainability take many forms. From best-in-class facilities management to innovative employee engagement activities we take this work seriously. In 2014, we are proud to report a more than 10% decrease in our overall emissions per full-time employee, based on base year 2011. The efforts of professionals around the globe working to eliminate and mitigate negative environmental impacts from our operations made this decrease possible.”

In January 2015, Arrow Electronics’ Value Recovery business added its North American processing facilities to the company’s existing Asset Disposal and Information Security Alliance (ADISA) certification programme.

The Youngstown division of Republic Services hosted a food drive to benefit Second Harvest Food Bank of the Mahoning Valley in “Project: Feed Our Valley.” In order to make this a success, Republic added a little “friendly competition” between the employees. One location collected 615 pounds and the other collected 640! Combined, the Youngstown Republic Services team donated 1,255 pounds of food, which is equivalent to about 1,045 meals provided!

I’m encouraged by the recent trend of gamification, in particular its applications in the environmental space.

Nearly 300 volunteers led by the CITGO Lemont Refinery and The Conservation Foundation came together this fall to remove invasive plants attacking wildlife within the Heritage Quarries Recreation Area (HQRA).