Apple is once again touting its environmental initiatives at the Silicon Valley-based company ahead of Earth Day. In a new push, CEO Tim Cook narrates a video entitled "Better" that lays down the company's continued efforts in the environment and how it is doing what it can to help save the planet.
It comes as the tech world has faced a major backlash over its actions, including online security and privacy issues. By promoting a more environmentally friendly atmosphere, tech companies are hoping they can deflect media coverage toward a positive outlook and more sustainability.
"Better. It's a powerful word, and a powerful ideal," Cook says to open the video. "It makes us look at the world and want more than anything to change it for the better. To innovate, improve, to reinvent. To make it better."
The video is a continuation of Apple's environmental responsibility website that is being updated to include sections on climate change, toxins, finite resources and the company's overall progress in the environment sector. Apple, on the site, says that it is helping to change its own energy practices on its Cupertino campus as well as how the general public views the products it is putting out in terms of the environmental safeguards the company is establishing.
Cook says the company has seen a reduction in its environmental footprint in recent years and has moved into using sustainable materials in its products that it delivers to the public. It also adds that renewable energy is becoming a major sticking point at the head campus in California as well as at plants across the globe.
"We have a long way to go and a lot to learn," Cook adds. "But now, more than ever, we will work to leave the world better than we found it and make the tools that inspire others to do the same."
The company even said that at its Chinese factory, all its facilities are PVC-free as it hopes to build on the environmental success in the U.S. and move those ideas further along in China.
As Silicon Valley looks to promote itself and the companies that call the tech hub home, the environment has become an almost litmus-like test. A company's public perception can largely be made or destroyed on its environmental stance and positions toward renewable energy, sustainability, and awareness of climate change.
