Apples Goes Green

Ethan Mansdorf, Photo Editor

After 24 years of creation, innovation and seemingly flawless execution, the world’s highest valued company has committed to being 100% powered by clean energy.

On Monday, Apple announced that all of its retail stores, data centers and corporate offices now run on clean energy all around, making good on its 2014 promise of going green. This move comes on the heels of one of the tech giants most profitable years; $48.35 billion in 2017 and the completion of its new 850,000 square foot, $5 billion headquarter campus.

The move to go green affects much more than the continental  United States, this change is being enacted in all 43 countries that It holds facilities. In order to fulfill the massive order of converting over 450 retail stores that employ 80,000 people, the company has began to use a variety of clean energy sources, such as solar technology, wind farms and new concepts like biogas fuel cells and micro-hydro generation systems for generating electricity.

All this may seem like a lot of over hauling to a system that has been “working” for the last 20 years but the reality of it is that without innovation in sustainability, massive tech, auto, and even food companies will have no where to pull power from in the near future. These companies are growing at a rate that far exceeds their current power availability. Soon resources like oil and non-biogas energy sources will be no longer available for power consumption.

“We’re going to keep pushing the boundaries of what is possible with the materials in our products, the way we recycle them, our facilities and our work with suppliers to establish new creative and forward-looking sources of renewable energy because we know the future depends on it,” said Apple CEO Tim Cook on the Apple website.

It takes innovation to create innovation, or at least to keep the lights on at this level of infrastructure.

The future is approaching faster every day, and moves like this will spawn other massive, power consuming corporations to follow in Apple’s foot steps. Soon enough we may no longer have to depend on nonrenewable resources to power our lives.