Some international assistance has tricked into the Balkans, but the scope is small. International aid organizations, both private and foreign government-funded, often focuses on non-profits and philanthropic work. Most of that money, it should be noted, goes to paying for these foreign workers’ salaries and expenses. So in the case of Bosnia, for example, little of that money goes to the people who work the hardest and need it the most.

Patagonia will soon launch a Common Threads Initiative that pushes what the company describes as the 4 R’s: reduce, reuse, repair, and recycle. It is another step in the Patagonia’s Common Thread’s Recycling Program, which started five years ago.

Xerox, lean and green, saved US$10.2 million this year while its employees eliminated 2.6 million pounds of waste. Workers 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, including water.

The SEC is looking for an “investor advocate,” which intuitively seems redundant since the SEC is supposed to advocate for investors large and small. Nevertheless, the new posting could have a role the helping small investors who face all kinds of problems when dealing with financial services and investment advisory firms.

Organizations like the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) have pushed banks to end financing of companies that carry out MTR. The results offer encouragment. Six large financial institutions developed guidelines that advocated a restriction on banking relationships with companies that use MTR mining practices.

BMW announced this week that it will invest about US$560 million in electric vehicle manufacturing, with new vehicles ready by 2013–and they promise a complete revamp and rethink of what a car is. That Mini E trial will lead to a broader range of EVs after all.

Yes, the holidays–not that the election is over, it is time to think about what you are going to buy online on Cyber Monday, unless of course you plan on waking up at 1 a.m. on Black Friday to snag that cheap flat-screen TV or laptop. Well, if you plan to give presents as part of a group, eBay may just have the solution for you.

If you have not put your name on the waiting list for a Nissan Leaf, you had better hurry fast. Not that scrambling to put your name on the list makes much of a difference: dealers who are part of a pilot project to showcase the Leaf are already sold out of the plug-in hybrid electric (PHEV) vehicles. The sellout occurred before the sedans could even arrive at the showrooms in a handful of US states.