Apple Announces Renewable Energy and Forestland Initiatives in China

They look after the environment better than they look after their employees in China, who are still little better than slave labour. Warped thinking IMO.

Foxconn employees are NOT Apple employees!

I'm excited for the Apple design video expounding on the creation of all these trees:

In the eyes of the consumer this is certainly a plus. By being proactive about managing their emissions and consumption of materials, this company will slowly give back to our environment and also earn the environmentally-concerned consumer's spending dollars.

This is one of those trademark apple moves. Granted, this is a company that also knows how to market products effectively, so they're great at talking up their accomplishments, but at the same time you don't see too many other hardware manufacturers displaying the same level of "concern."

Tim Cook's team should be proud. If Steve's legacy was creating apple, Tim's will be greening the tree from which the fruit bears.

Good for Apple! This is one I like Samsung to copy!

This is the kind of news that makes me feel proud of Apple. It may be a huge tech company, but yet they also care A LOT about the environment. I bet no other related manufacturer would even think of this.

Keep it up, Apple!

Have you heard about Farms? Their product is produce. A tree farm's product is trees. If the tree farm stops producing trees, then it goes out of business. Farms don't have 12 month time frames, some are operational (for one family or another or one for company or another) for centuries.

If there is a demand for trees (i.e., paper) and if governments, companies, or just reality does not allow those trees to be economically produced from old growth forests, then these farms will see their trees replanted and will be taken care of. For the tree farmer it is simple economic interest. It isn't particularly complicated. Apple might be acting from a higher standard, but most likely they are locking in a good price for the paper by entering into long-term contracts with these tree farms. They are doing the same thing in renewable energy. They are fixing their input price on a necessary item. The "good for the earth" PR is just gravy. Delicious gravy. to be sure. But I bet all these deals pencil out economically as well.

Yes I've heard of farms. My wife grew up on a farm. A real farm. A century farm.
I grew up with W and GP talking about tree farms, and sustainable management and it was all BS.
The reality was that they ran a few plots of "tree farms" to show to the press and legislators. Meanwhile they stripped BLM and Forest Service lands bare, silted up the streams and walked off to new stands leaving devastated small towns with closed mills in a trashed environment in their wake. That's how the lumber industry works.
And even if the current management thinks in terms of sustainability, it won't last. There used to be a small company in California that ran a sustainable operation. They owned several thousand acres and only harvested as much each year as would regrow. That lasted until the '90s when they were bought out. The new owners stripped everything in a few years. They then closed the mill sold off the land for development, pocked the money and went on to new conquests.
That's the history of "sustainable" forestry and "tree farming".

Maybe Apple and the Chinese can do it right. I don't know, nobody can predict the future. But given the history of lumber companies from Georgia, to Minnesota, to Oregon, to Sumatra, I'm dubious.

They look after the environment better than they look after their employees in China, who are still little better than slave labour. Warped thinking IMO.

Yeah, right

responsibly managed working forests

OK good, but colour me dubious.

I grew up in Oregon. During my whole childhood they talked about responsibly managing the forests too. Then I'd go flying with my dad and see mile after mile where everything had been cut and not replanted. That is everything except for a strip along the highway so people could convince themselves that Oregon was still covered with trees. Every year we'd choke under the smoke from slash-burning. Every year the logs coming out of the woods would get smaller. Every year Weyerhaeuser and Georgia Pacific would close more small mills, while taking the profits and opening some new lands for "responsible management". Finally they got down to demanding they be allowed to "responsibly manage" the last 1% of the old growth forest.

Why would I expect any company to responsibly manage a forest that takes 40 years to mature when the horizon for most companies planning is at most 12 months? Apple may be better than most but ...

Colour me dubious.

They look after the environment better than they look after their employees in China, who are still little better than slave labour. Warped thinking IMO.

what do you know about general employment conditions in china? it is always easy to pass comments like that. the bottomline is, the employees, in general, have a better life and better earning. u take that job away in the name of "fairness", they will remain jobless and life will turn miserable. will u be generous enough to employ those people?

Haha I can hear Ive now - "al-u-minim-um".

Aluminium.
Or Aluminum for those who want to call it that.

But Aluminimum is definitely a mistake ;)