OAKLAND, CA — We've seen a flurry of CSR reports released over the last week from high-profile companies touting their social and environmental achievements.

Though they hail from a wide variety of sectors, the metrics used to report environmental performance fall along familiar lines, including carbon footprint, energy and water use, waste and packaging.

The following is a peek at some of the reports that crossed our desks over the last seven days, along with links to the reports so you can dig in even further.

AT&T

The Dallas-based telecommunications company sees a great market opportunity to help its customers save energy and money, citing a 2008 study concluding that information and communications technologies have the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. by as much as 22 percent by 2020.

To advance this potential, AT&T has launched a series of tools to help enterprise customers quantify emissions avoided by using some of its products to reduce travel, it said in its 2009 Citizenship and Sustainability Report. It also created an external advisory board to promote the use of ICT to address sustainability issues and develop metrics to track ICT environmental impacts.

In its own operations, AT&T is working toward its goal of deploying 15,000 alternative fuel vehicles over the next decade. By the end of 2009, the company's AFV fleet totaled 970 despite the fact that the vehicles it needs aren't yet readily available off the production line.

AT&T reduce the amount of electricity consumed, relative to data growth on its network, by 23.8 percent. Its 2009 goal called for a 15 percent improvement in 2009, compared to 2008.

The company is scheduled to complete a water footprint assessment in 2010.

Ball

One of the largest packaging companies in the world, Ball has worked to reduce the weight of its products and boost recycling. Its efforts led it to increase the amount of post-consumer recycled content in its PET bottles by 6.5 percent in 2009 and embark on a new lightweighting project that will reduce the avoid the use of roughly 6.5 million pounds of PET resin each year, Ball said in its 2010 Sustainability Report.

Ball managed to improve its net earnings by 21.4 percent in 2009 while also reducing electricity use by 5.7 percent. Between 2007 and 2009, Ball has trimmed electricity use by 11 percent, due in part to the $36 million it has spent on energy saving projects over the two-year period.

The company improved energy efficiency, which it measures per 1,000 units produced, by 9 percent in 2009.

Ball's absolute water consumption declined 8.6 percent between 2007 and 2009. When measured against 1,000 units produced, water use shrank by 5.5 percent during the same time period.

Baxter

Nearly 40 percent of its total greenhouse gas emissions reside in its supply chain, the medical products giant Baxter explained it its 2009 Sustainability Report.  In response, the company launched its Global Supplier Sustainability Program last year to help aim its procurement practices toward products and services that help it reduce its environmental footprint while also strengthen its supply chain and reduce costs.

By 2015, the company plans to survey 100 of its top suppliers on various criteria, including greenhouse gas emissions, natural resource use, and packaging take-back programs, along with plans for reduction. In 2009, the company identified to 100 suppliers and officially launched its e-impact program to communicate suppliers' environmental success stories and draw attention to its employees' environmental initiatives.