No, but Apple Retail Employees are. Is there a significant difference?
Apple retail employees in China are treated like salves?
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And what manufacturer would this be? Do you have a name?
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Apple Announces Renewable Energy and Forestland Initiatives in China
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Apple retail employees in China are treated like salves?
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And what manufacturer would this be? Do you have a name?
Indeed. Don't overlook Apple's financial/corporate/capitalist interest in "green technology".
By building solar collection and tree farms and reducing use of toxins and ... Apple is reducing their critical reliance on other companies. Power goes out, servers & production stay up, running 100% on off-grid electricity. Toxins reduced, less hazmat handling & disposal issues. Tree farms expanded, paper etc supply chain is bracketed & reliable.
Might be expensive up front, but if they're building a multi-billion dollar headquarters building, they're planning on being around for a LONG time. Supply chain guru Cook takes a look at where points of failure/reliance/cost will be years/decades hence, and starts mitigating those problems well in advance by implementing elegant & profitable solutions now.
If you're going to bother having enough if an opinion on the matter to commentate on it, please educate yourself on what constitutes a "forest" and the necessary and constructive role of periodic fires in them.
There are more trees in Michigan today than there were 50 years ago, because of laws requiring new trees be planted whenever one gets cut down by industry, and local building codes requiring so many trees on newly developed properties, even if there weren't any trees before. And Michigan's rainy season is during the month of April, hence the saying "April showers bring May flowers." So our rainy season is at it's end.
And finally the proposal to raise our taxes for road repair was defeated, so there won't be a raise in our taxes, at least not from that proposal.
Be sure to finish your coffee before ranting.
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.
Paying higher prices for paper and timber products? Done, I'll cop that gladly. Perfectly palatable. Let's also encorage systems to email purchase receipts as some stores are doing, Lets put a price on a supermarkets' ability to clog my letterbox with advertisements I don't want. You want to shove election material down my throat, not unless you have my permission. There's easy savings to be made, more so in paper than timber, but they're there.
USA had clear cut nearly the entire nation by the late 1800s leaving only a handful of stands of old growth forest. What you're seeing in those pictures and nearly every tree you see in this country today is new growth young forest just getting started rebuilding. It looks neat and clean and tidy to you because they were just replanted after their complete and total destruction. Much of it replanted rather poorly with 1800s era knowledge of forestry as well. Sterile monocultures of trees are plantations, not functioning forests.
Professionals in a field do things for reasons. On a national level, the forestry service makes its decisions on science, because that is its job, not political whims of hippies or businessmen, as states are free to do.
I think that's actually what he's saying. City environmentalists don't necessarily understand the importance of regular controlled burn-offs.
The reason trucks ruin the roads quicker is because they aren't built properly. Roads are built in such a way to make sure that future overpaid union workers have a job, not to make sure that they will stay in good shape for 20 years as envisioned by President Eisenhower.
Exactly! This is no more a forest than a lettuce field is a meadow. To make this worth anything, other than to pulp manufacturers, there would have to be stipulations to leave actual forests alone.
BTW, what are the chances that there are any living creatures on this farm?
Awesome!!
How about this now, build your stuff here. (Yes, I know, a little bit less profits) but build up the economy that buys your stuff, and start a trend.
Will all the posters who want Apple to make stuff in the US, please educate themselves?
Even if paid well and your iGadget prices would go up and you'd be willing to pay more:
There are NOT enough workers here available to produce the amounts Apple produces. Manual labor is mostly being done by Latinos in this country, many illegal. Do you want Apple to go that route?
Anybody with a good education wants to manage something, certainly not work on assembly lines.
There are not enough engineers as USA education is abysmal in these areas.
Most of the raw material used is not in this country.
The factories and real estate these buildings consume would further destroy nature and the process of getting anything approved take forever.
The payroll taxes, labor laws and tax structures chase business away as it is.
.....and, and and.
Think a l little, check facts and EDUCATE yourselves, instead of spewing the same old USA first mantra.
We live in a global economy. Taking jobs away in China, brings other problems here or in other parts of the world.
Most of all do not apply US standards (or other countries) to other cultures.
Finally, are you really telling everybody that if you would own a company and you can buy a million pieces of a product for say $ 5 in China vs. say $ 7.50 (put in you own number) in the US, you would buy here and pay 25 million more?
They measure your pulse at Walmart for FREE.
HA! Thanks Apple. I've been trying to explain to people that trees are a renewable resource. Now that Apple is in the game of cutting down trees, AND growing them sustainably, maybe the anti paper crowd will back off a bit.
Yes I know cutting down old growth trees for paper is bad, but people need to back off the companies that grow and harvest their own trees. Trees grow back. No one says stop eating burgers because were going to run out of cows. We just breed more to meet demand.
Yes I know cutting down old growth trees for paper is bad, but people need to back off the companies that grow and harvest their own trees. Trees grow back. No one says stop eating burgers because were going to run out of cows. We just breed more to meet demand.
Apple could easily build their own factories and hold them to a higher standard, providing their employees with decent wages, heathcare, education and housing.
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The Chinese have a history of riding roughshod over their own people when there is money to be made from developments. Residents protesting against their homes being bullozed by illegal developments are routinely beaten and murdered by corrupt gangs who pay off the local police and government officials to look the other way.
China has one of the worst records for human rights abuses on the planet. The Chinese Communist government is a digusting and vile piece of ****. And we're proping them up. Allowing them to steal our jobs, allowing them to sell their goods in our countries while at the same they block our goods from selling in China, allowing them to undervalue their currency to help their exports, etc, etc.
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The Chinese have a history of riding roughshod over their own people when there is money to be made from developments. Residents protesting against their homes being bullozed by illegal developments are routinely beaten and murdered by corrupt gangs who pay off the local police and government officials to look the other way.
China has one of the worst records for human rights abuses on the planet. The Chinese Communist government is a digusting and vile piece of ****. And we're proping them up. Allowing them to steal our jobs, allowing them to sell their goods in our countries while at the same they block our goods from selling in China, allowing them to undervalue their currency to help their exports, etc, etc.
People need to travel to a socialist country and look into the eyes of their citizens. The light is out. Spirit is lacking. Motivation is low. No freedom loving, go and get some, full of life people like we have here.
So many folks hate on capitalism. Please go try the alternative and then re-evaluate.
Just to check, how long do you actually think it takes for a tree to mature again?
That isn't a picture of a forest. That is a picture of a crop of trees.
All the same species, evenly spaced, all the same size.
The wooded acres that Apple cleared in North Carolina for solar panels had much more biodiversity than that crop in China.
All the same species, evenly spaced, all the same size.
The wooded acres that Apple cleared in North Carolina for solar panels had much more biodiversity than that crop in China.
All good points. Yes, the history of this stuff has been inconsistent. The main problem is that governments have not put in the regulations to prevent these forms of abuse. The theory is fine, but it takes decades of enforcement to make sure the next generation of trees are grown and protected. As citizens we should push our governments to regulate the use of trees that do not come from tree farms, and especially to not give logging companies access to public lands. They should log their own farms instead.
But if the access to public lands is there and if the market's pricing pushes companies to behave in non-sustainable manners, then there will always be risk that this is what they do.
I suspect China (due to massive more density of population) has very little unaccounted for land. I've been to China a few times, though only on the coast. But in that area even hours outside of a major city, the place is still very densely populated. There are acres of trees anywhere that I've seen in China. It all looks like either housing or cultivated farm land. So China's logging industry may be way past the point of having access to anything close to an old growth forest.
Good rant. But corporations don't pay taxes. You do. Raise the cost of doing business, and business will raise the cost of goods and services. Econ 101.
I can't imagine the sheer amount of political/corporate corruption they're going to have to slice through to accomplish this.
That's exactly what he's saying. Assorted "environmentalist" groups have pushed policies eliminating periodic fires (by aggressively dousing ALL fires, natural or not), resulting in extreme destruction from out-of-control burns fueled by unnaturally thick tinder.
Funny, but due to that thing called 'climate change', the rainy season is dragging well into May and even June. But anyway...
And young trees don't produce the oxygen like older trees do, nor do they shade the ground as much either.
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It's because non-union politicians try to use the cheapest ways possible to cover the dirt, and concrete isn't used enough anymore. It's not 'union workers', it's budget cuts for tax breaks to corporations cutting union jobs. (Which Michigan is a right to work for less state, so unions are kinda not doing so well, but the 'Race To The Bottom' is picking up with lots of new contestants)
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That's bovine excrement and you know it. If corporations stop paying taxes, like in Kansas, the whole society pays one way or the other.
Corporations do, or at least *should* pay taxes. Nothing they rely on was created, or is maintained for free. Paying taxes is part of that whole 'patriotism' thing... Flags, apple pies, Chevrolets...
Plus they help pay for the military, and if I have to pay more for our outrageous drunken sailor spending military, I'll have to cut them off...
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I remember Alzheimer's victim Ronald Reagan declaring trees as a public enemy. Oh, and ketchup was a vegetable. Just like him, apparently...