Apple Computer has been lately concerned to the environment and sustainability and decided to make a huge effort on the green front, through the Restoration Fund.
The Restoration Fund is a $200 million fund that deals with investments that promote so-called “functioning forests”, i.e. forests that produce timber in a sustainable way around the world, including Europe.
The project to which other companies adhere is developed in collaboration with the US non-profit Conservation International, which is also a co-investment, and with financial giant Goldman Sachs that will manage the fund.
Apple’s ultimate goal is to achieve carbon neutrality by 2030, distributing products with a net zero impact in less than a decade. In other words, their production will have to be balanced by the elimination of the same amount of carbon dioxide emitted to produce. The main way is, of course, to reduce emissions into the production chain. To balance the effects on the emissions ecosystem, it is necessary to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, investing in forests and nature, which are the essential and “natural” tool to do so. As it is well known, soil, forests, wetlands and grasslands take CO2 from the atmosphere and store it in their soils, roots and timber for hundreds of years, releasing at the same time oxygen.
The Rehabilitation Fund will therefore invest precisely in forestry projects, in particular for the restoration of forests and the protection of local habitats, so that the levels of carbon dioxide taken from the atmosphere from that forest area are carefully measured and stored at the same level, if not increased.
In many forests used for the production of sustainable timber, the plant is not adequate: the Restoration Fund will aim precisely to correct the problems linked to this phenomenon, with the aim of convincing that another model is possible: the one that gains not on the ruin of those territories but on their protection. Lisa Jackson, vice president of Apple’s Environment, Policy and Social Initiatives, explains that the company aims to embrace an even broader change in the future, encouraging investment in carbon removal around the world, in the hope that others will share their goals and contribute with their resources to support and protect endangered ecosystems.
Aurora Colasanto 3AL
