Apple is focused on using only the resources it needs, and ensuring that it adds to the world’s resources whenever possible. That leads to some innovative places. For instance, Apple recently announced all U.S. facilities and operations are powered by 100 percent renewable energy, and, increasingly, that’s new, clean energy which Apple has helped add to the U.S. grid.

Apple believes that paper, like energy, can be a renewable resource. So Apple is striving to supply 100 percent of the virgin fibers used in its paper and packaging from sustainably managed forests or controlled wood sources.

But Apple is going beyond simply purchasing renewable resources to actually protecting and increasing the acreage of sustainably managed working forests.

The Conservation Fund has developed an entirely new, private sector-based approach to conserving forests — raising corporate and charitable funds to purchase and manage these forestlands sustainably so they can thrive and continue fulfilling their vital role in the ecosystem while supplying business paper and packaging needs.

The threat to America’s working forests is one of the most overlooked and urgent environmental stories of our time. We are in the midst of one of the greatest land transfers in history. In the last 15 years, we’ve already lost 23 million acres of forestland that provided the pulp, paper, and solid wood material for products we all use. That’s roughly an area the size of Maine. As land continues to be sold and change hands at an alarming rate, an estimated 45 million more acres are currently in the crosshairs of development.

Our working forests clean the air we breathe, provide critical habitats for wildlife, and filter the water for over half of Americans. They also are important to the economy, supplying 2.8 million jobs, fueling mills, and sustaining hundreds of logging towns. Working forests are different from the protected national forests we visit with family and friends. Privately held, they represent the last large, intact forests left in America — and they are at grave risk.