New video details Apple’s effort to preserve and manage forestland

We’re more than three months past Earth Day but that didn’t stop Apple from posting a brand new, whimsically animated Earth Day video to its YouTube channel yesterday.

The 60-second clip details the company’s effort to preserve and manage forestland.

Titled “Can an apple grow a tree” and narrated by Lisa Jackson, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Environment, Policy and Social Initiatives, the video says Apple wants to responsibly manage nearly one million acres of forest by 2020.

“Lisa Jackson, Apple’s lead on Environment work, and a group of colleagues went out to dinner one night,” reads the video’s description. “They ate, drank and came up with a plan to ensure almost one million acres of forests are responsibly managed by 2020.”

“We were drinking wine and Kate said, ‘We should just buy a forest,'” V.Y. Chow, data and environmental scientist at Apple, jokingly remarks in the video.

The self-imposed goal is in addition to the company’s partnership with the Conservation Fund designed to protect 36,000 acres of forestland in Maine and North Carolina for sustainable product packaging.

“At this point over 99 percent of the papers and fibers we use are responsibly sourced or recycled,” said Connie Yang, who works in packaging product design at Apple.

And here it is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cA9aGzcHpk

Given Apple’s size, footprint and sales, their operations and actions impact the environment perhaps more than those of other Silicon Valley companies.

But unlike others, Apple has spent, and continues to spend, big money on switching its retail stores, supply chain and corporate buildings to renewable energy and is making other strides to reduce its carbon footprint and “leave the world better than we found it”.