In September 2009, when Jobs was interviewed by BusinessWeek, he said around the company’s environmental issues: “Unfortunately, we are significantly ahead of our competitors.”
Editor’s note: This article is from WeChat public account “PingWest Play” (ID: wepingwest), author Jianguo.
In September 2009, when Jobs was interviewed by BusinessWeek, he said around the company’s environmental issues: “Unfortunately, we are significantly ahead of our competitors.”
The fire in the Amazon rainforest lasted for nearly a month, and people around the world learned about it through the news.
People are calling for attention to the “Lung of the Earth” through social media. Some media reports pointed out that in the long run, the carbon emissions of the Amazon rainforest fire may cause the problem of home warming. Although there is a natural fire in the Amazon rainforest every year, there are more fires this year than in previous years.
▲Image from Greenpeace
The Brazilian government has already launched a fire-fighting operation, but wants to completely extinguish the fire, but also hopes that the Amazon will enter the rainy season in October.
The disaster relief of the Amazon rainforest requires a process. Recently, Apple CEO Tim Cook announced through his personal account that Apple will help the Amazon rainforest to recover after the damage through donations.
Climate change has always been a concern of Cook. He himself gave a speech in May 2019, saying: “Under the discussion of climate change, I don’t think we can discuss ‘who we are’ and ‘What are we owing to each other.’
▲Image from 9to5mac
When this issue came to Apple, it became a corporate responsibility.
Protect the forest
Like the attitude of the Amazon rainforest, Apple attaches great importance to the source of the original forest resources, recycled paper.
On May 11, 2015, Apple announced a new environmental protection project in China. Apple and the World Wildlife Fund work together to upgrade China’s management of forest resources and hope to protect millions of acres of forested areas.
“Like energy, forests can also be renewable resources,” said Lisa Jackson, Apple’s vice president of environmental affairs. “We believe we can rely on natural renewable resources to operate and ensure that we protect and nurture more sustainable ecological forests. Strive to produce the same amount of paper used to make our products.”
After May 16th, Apple partnered with The Conservation Fund to announce the permanent protection of more than 36,000 acres of virgin forests in the eastern United States. They are certified for sustainable development and will adopt a forest management strategy to improve the health of the forest.
A recent report from the Global Forest Watch shows that about 20 million hectares of tropical rain forests disappeared in 2018, equivalent to the destruction of the original forest area of the Belgian area, and the destruction of the original forests. This has an impact on global warming and resource utilization.
The paper packaging for products such as iPhones, iPads, and Macs produced by Apple comes from the raw fibers produced in these controlled forests to ensure the sustainable use of resources. At the same time, Apple is working hard to improve the use of recycled paper in packaging.
Apple 2019 After the WWDC conference, Lisa Jackson, Apple’s vice president of environment, policy and social affairs, said in an interview that in the 2018 fiscal year, Apple’s average use of recycled paper reached 58%. This data is also reflected in Apple’s Environmental Responsibility Report-2019 Progress Report.
In this report, Apple showed its determination to be environmentally friendly.
Start production, no longer reaching out to the earth.
Reduce carbon emissions
Although users have noThe law directly feels Apple’s efforts in energy and environmental protection, but we can still find out from Apple’s Environmental Responsibility Report.
The MacBook Air and Mac mini we use are made from 100% recycled aluminum, and Apple replaces 14 materials that need priority with 100% recycled or recyclable materials.
Below, we have rarely seen the presence of plastic materials in the packaging of Apple products. From iPhone 6s to iPhone 8, Apple has reduced plastic materials by 57%. The tray inside the package was replaced with paper material, and the plastic we can see was a film outside the box.
Even on this layer of plastic film, Apple is trying to reduce its use. The latest iPhone Xs has a 2g reduction in plastic film compared to the iPhone X package.
Since April 2016, Apple decided to replace the plastic shopping bag with a paper shopping bag. As of March 2019, Apple finally replaced all the retail store’s shopping bags with 100% fiber shopping bags. The paper weave handle above also contains 80% renewable fiber.
Togo said that 75% of Apple’s new headquarters, Apple Park, is powered by fuel cells in the facility and solar panels on the roof.
In 2018, Apple announced that 100% of its offices, retail stores, and data centers in the world are powered by renewable energy. Apple also strongly urges suppliers to join the Clean Energy Program. There are already 40, and there have been rumors that Apple has rigidly required Foxconn to use non-polluting materials and processes to manufacture products. Foxconn has also increased its investment in energy conservation and environmental protection projects.
▲Supplier List
Everything has helped Apple to reduce carbon emissions. In FY18, compared to FY2017, Apple reduced its carbon footprint by a total of 4.8 million tons.
In the past three years, Apple’s carbon footprint has been declining year by year. And this is exactly inversely proportional to Apple’s performance, Apple has proved that while the company’s revenue rises, it can also do better on environmental protection projects.
Where is the border?
The protection of nature and the development of human society should have taken the lead, and the pace of environmental protection still lags behind social development. Apple’s layout in terms of resource protection, renewable energy, and pollution reduction not only creates an environmentally-friendly image for the company, but also provides longer-term benefits, both in the company’s environment.
Apple, the first technology company in history to break the market value of trillions, has set an example in energy and environmental protection.
At the moment, 5G is in the ascendant, and the future development of the technology industry will be extremely dependent on big data and cloud computing. Accordingly, the demand for data centers will increase exponentially, and the development of this industry places high demands on electrical energy.
Apple’s energy layout is proactive. In China, Apple invested in two 20 MW solar PV projects in Sichuan Province in 2014, and is currently constructing two of its data centers – located in Guizhou and Mongolia, and has also determined that all renewable energy sources are used.
▲A wind farm invested by Apple in mainland China
In fact, Apple currently adopts or plans to adopt renewable energy in five of its operating and construction data centers worldwide. According to the 2019 Environmental Responsibility Report, Apple’s global data center and colocation facilities used more than 1.3 billion kWh in FY18, and the use of renewable energy avoided 466,000 tons of CO2 emissions.
From product materials to energy consumption, Apple has injected environmental protection into the company’s operations. For Apple, environmental protection has no boundaries. This is the company’s mission from beginning to end.
But 12 years ago, it’s hard to imagine this isWhat the company did. At that time, Greenpeace publicly criticized Apple for not paying attention to environmental protection. This action stimulated Jobs, who quickly responded by setting Apple’s environmental vision “Greener Apple” and giving it to 2007. All subsequent products are marked with an “Environmental Scorecard”.
In September 2009, when Jobs was interviewed by BusinessWeek, he said around the company’s environmental issues: “Unfortunately, we are far ahead of our competitors.” This sentence is still in the present.
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