Welcome back: Three water-related stories for you today. First: President Trump signed an executive order yesterday calling for the mining of the deep sea as part of a broader effort by the White House to secure critical minerals for the U.S.

The move marks the first time the U.S. has signaled its intent to harvest minerals from the seabed and pits the country against the U.N. body governing the ocean floor and the harvesting of minerals and metals in international waters. Environmental groups have railed against deep-sea mining, saying it harms one of the last remaining untouched habitats.

But for Trump and the industry’s proponents, the controversial practice opens up a previously untapped source of critical minerals and metals such as cobalt, nickel and manganese, which are considered vital for renewable-energy, steel and defense production. See below for the full story. 

Meanwhile, on a huge saltwater pond in Martin County, Texas, two dozen cone-shaped, floating evaporators are humming away in the middle of the biggest oil field in the U.S. 

They are part of an experiment by Exxon Mobil to address one of the challenges facing frackers in the Permian Basin of West Texas and New Mexico: what to do with the gargantuan amounts of noxious water they produce alongside crude.

Finally, Greenland and the rest of the Arctic region has warmed three times faster than the global average temperature since 1980, according to a 2024 report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, while Greenland loses 270 billion tons of ice each year.

The region’s warming climate has boosted interest by foreign firms hoping to extract mineral deposits that lie underneath Greenland’s diminishing ice sheet. Now one local company is packaging up, shipping off and selling some of that vast, shrinking ice—but at what cost?

Read on for more on these stories and other sustainability news.

The executive order signed by President Trump yesterday, Unleashing America’s Offshore Critical Minerals and Resources, instructs the U.S. to rapidly develop its ability to collect and process minerals from the seafloor, saying they are crucial for infrastructure, advanced defense energy systems and manufacturing, WSJ Pro Sustainable Business's Yusuf Khan writes.

Mining companies specializing in deep-sea operations are likely to benefit from the move. One, Canadian miner The Metals Co., signaled last month its plans to harvest the seabed with the U.S., bypassing international protocols.

According to those familiar with the details of the plan, TMC has been in talks with the White House for several months. It intends to use a U.S. law from the 1980s—the Deep Sea Hard Mineral Resources Act—and the executive order to start mining in the open ocean in just over a year. 

But by signing the executive order yesterday, Trump is pitting the U.S. against the United Nations. Until now, rules and regulations relating to the ocean floor have been the responsibility of an obscure U.N. body known as the International Seabed Authority. Based in Kingston, Jamaica, the ISA has been working on a code related to seabed mining for the past decade.

However, despite a series of negotiations, a mining code hasn’t yet been finalized. In joining with the U.S., TMC is in effect sidestepping the ISA.

Fracking companies are investing millions of dollars testing technologies to cleanse the waste water they produce, so it can be reused outside the oil patch. They are crafting plans to release the scrubbed water into rivers and hope to one day provide it to farmers and municipalities.

As oil production has jumped to records in recent years, so have  the volumes of water it uses. Permian producers on average pump about four barrels of water for each barrel of crude. They have long reinjected it underground, which has caused the ground to buckle, triggered earthquakes and made drilling more onerous, the WSJ's Benoît Morenne writes.

Last year, Permian drillers discarded roughly 5.5 billion barrels of water that way, according to water analytics firm B3 Insight, roughly equivalent to the amount of water that New York City consumes in about eight months.

Frackers say removing the salt from waste water means it could be used to irrigate city parks, golf courses and potentially nonfood crops such as cotton. Exxon Mobil says it aims to have a commercial-size desalination facility operating in the Permian by the end of next year. Energy-services firm Tetra Technologies and driller EOG Resources last month announced it was starting a pilot project to desalinate produced water from the Permian.

• Frackers Are Now Drilling for Clean Power
• In America’s Biggest Oil Field, the Ground Is Swelling and Buckling
• U.S. Oil Drillers Are Going Electric—if They Can Get the Electricity

Entrepreneurs are flocking to Greenland to harvest its most abundant resource in hopes there are enough people willing to pay a premium for vodka made with glacial meltwater or a cocktail chilled with its ice.

Arctic Ice, a two-year-old startup, captures car-size floating icebergs from a fjord in the west of the country, cuts them up with a chain saw, packs the chunks into refrigerated containers and ships them 10,000-miles to Dubai, where it turns them into a pack of six cubes which it sells for $100.

But some critics said the carbon footprint of shipping ice for five weeks on oil-burning containerships from Greenland to the Persian Gulf is wasteful, since Dubai already makes its own ice, the WSJ's Eric Niiler writes.

“This is a good example of how to start your own business and create a sense of belonging in the community here,” said Javier Arnaut, professor of social science and economics at the University of Greenland. “But at the same time, the ethical concerns may offset this idea. Is this actually a necessity that the world needs?”

• Greenland Has the Makings of a Mining Boom. So Where Is Everyone?
• Why Getting Greenland’s Mineral Riches Won’t Be Easy

Tell me what you think: Send me your feedback and suggestions at perry.cleveland-peck@wsj.com or reply to any newsletter. If you were forwarded this newsletter, you can sign up here.

As financial stress mounts, chains like Dollar Tree and Academy that cater to the budget-conscious are seeing more of a new class of shoppers.

Businesses need to start preparing themselves for the AI-driven rise of a relentless, always-on economy.

Private-equity firms see opportunity in a sector they once considered too unreliable: advertising.

As tariff wars raise supply-chain uncertainty and green initiatives see a pushback, some renewables-focused companies are forging new relationships, including in the defense industry.

• Companies plan shift to green energy despite Trump-era rollbacks. (FT)
   
• Corporate sustainability is in crisis. What should companies do now? (Harvard Business Review)
   
• Elon Musk’s xAI accused of pollution over Memphis supercomputer. (Guardian)
   
• Mondelez sustainability report shows challenges in lowering virgin plastic. (ESG Dive)
   
• Amazon’s blueprint for cutting building emissions. (Trellis)
   
• The nuclear industry loves this geothermal startup. (Heatmap)
   
• LEGO opens sustainable, renewables-powered factory. (ESG Today)
   
• New Jersey teenager charged with arson in Pinelands wildfire. (Reuters)
   
• Xi commits China to tougher climate targets as U.S. retreats. (Bloomberg)
   
• A planned EU rule has coffee growers in Ethiopia scrambling. (NYT)

WSJ Pro Sustainable Business gives you an inside look at how companies are tackling sustainability. Send comments to bureau chief Perry Cleveland-Peck at perry.cleveland-peck@wsj.com and reporter Yusuf Khan at yusuf.khan@wsj.com. Follow us on LinkedIn at wsjperry and yusuf_khan.