Apple Leads First-Ever $200 Million Climate Change Restore Fund With Partners AOC Sustainability

Apple announced in April announced a first-of-its-kind carbon removal initiative — called the Restore Fund — that will make investments in forestry projects to remove carbon from the atmosphere while generating a financial return for investors. Launched with Conservation International and Goldman Sachs, Apple’s $200 million fund aims to remove at least 1 million metric tons of carbon dioxide annually from the atmosphere, equivalent to the amount of fuel used by over 200,000 passenger vehicles, while demonstrating a viable financial model that can help scale up investment in forest restoration.

This effort is part of Apple’s broader goal to become carbon neutral across its entire value chain by 2030. While the company will directly eliminate 75 percent of emissions for its supply chain and products by 2030, the fund will help address the remaining 25 percent of Apple’s emissions by removing carbon from the atmosphere. Trees absorb carbon as they grow, with researchers estimating that tropical forests hold more carbon than humanity has emitted over the past 30 years from burning coal, oil, and natural gas, despite ongoing deforestation. The partnership aims to unlock the potential of this natural solution by scaling it in a way that makes it attractive to businesses.

A Wild Species Coffee Bean Could Save Our Premium Taste Daily Brew Addiction AOC Sustainability

A wild species of coffee rediscovered by scientists in the forests of Sierra Leone may stabilize the growing concerns about the global supply of premium coffee in a world that is heating up. Coffee arabica, a plant that prefers mild average annual temperatures of around 66 degrees Fahrenheit and is favored by coffee connoisseurs like Anne, is particularly at risk to climate change. The bean currently accounts for over 60% of the world’s coffee production.

Coffea stenophylla is a wild coffee species from West Africa which, until recently, was thought to be extinct outside Ivory Coast.About two years ago, the plant was re-disco9vered growing wild in Sierra Leone, where it existed as a coffee crop a century ago

Currently modeling suggests that Stenophylla will tolerate global temperatures of around 77 degrees Fahrenheit, 11 to 12 degrees higher than Arabica, and 3.42 degrees higher than the less valued and more bitter Robusta.

"Being somebody who's tasted a lot of wild coffees they're not great, they don't taste like Arabica so our expectations were pretty low," Aaron Davis, head of coffee research at Royal Botanical Gardens Kew in the United Kingdom and lead author of the paper, tells BBC News. “We were completely blown away by the fact that this coffee tasted amazing.”

Still speaking with BBC News, Davis adds that finding a wild coffee with excellent flavor that is also heat and drought tolerant is “the holy grail of coffee breeding.”

Follow the story and more in-depth coffee learnings in AOC Sustainability.

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