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Apple's virtue signaling is getting out of hand
Is phasing out leather actually good for the environment?
In the currently popular narrative, veganism and environmentalism are often espoused together, by the same people. The two are used to virtue signal by people on the left and get “points” with their friends, while the high horse they’re on is used to emotionally shame those they disagree with.
This was especially clear when Apple announced their new iPhone 15 and Apple Watches a couple of days ago. They dedicated a substantial portion of their presentation towards environmentalist virtue signaling.
As an aside, isn’t it interesting how a lot of their goals are set to be completed by 2030 - the same date the WEF and Davos crowd are targeting for eradication of private property and the advent of global communism/enviro-fascism?
What I found funny though was Apple announcing that they’re phasing out all leather products in favor of polyester. They also made fun of an employee in a leather jacket.
But leather is renewable, and pasture-raised cattle benefit the environment by fertilizing the soil in a sustainable manner - something we desperately need as topsoils in many countries are eroding due to intensive, industrial farming practices that don’t use proper crop rotation and destroy all living things with toxic pesticides.
Moreover, animals are part of the lifecycle of all living beings on Earth, so finding a way to make a consumer good out of an animal (that would have been slaughtered for its meat anyway) is both eco-friendly, renewable, and efficient.
What is Apple replacing this eco-friendly, renewable leather with? Polyester. A material made from petroleum products, which are non-renewable and very polluting. Irony at its finest.
Meanwhile, Apple’s transition to solar power, with increased demand for the incredibly polluting lithium and cobalt minerals required for the batteries, is not environmentally friendly either.
If Apple really cared about the environment, they’d stop their annual product lifecycle and update their products every 2 or 3 years, especially considering most updates are so small and incremental they’re hardly worth even making marketing videos for. Of course, that would eat into their bottom line.
The iPhone 15 introduces a different charging port, a slightly better camera, and an upgraded button. Are those minor upgrades worth making millions of these devices and shipping them all over the world? From an environmental perspective - no. From a business perspective - definitely.
I don’t have anything against Apple making money by selling as many products as they want, but they need to get off their environmental high horse and stop pretending to be something they’re not - a big corporation trying to make money.