Apple slammed over cringey zero carbon video starring Octavia Spencer

Apple has been criticized for a bizarre film in which CEO Tim Cook and his staff are berated for their green credentials by Mother Nature, played by Oscar-winning actress Octavia Spencer. Apple unveiled their highly anticipated new iPhone 15 at the company’s ‘Wonderlust’ event in California. Along with the release of their desired new gadget, they released a less-than-desirable video skit that viewers are calling “cringey,” “corny” and “bizarre.”

The tech giant interrupted their release event to show the five-minute drama, which Apple CEO Tim Cook later posted on priorities. and we are deeply committed to doing our part. “Today we had a special guest – a true force of nature – stop by to check on our progress.”

The special guest was ‘Mother Nature’ – played by Oscar-winning actress Octavia Spencer, 53 – who scolded Apple board members over the company’s carbon footprint but was repeatedly told about the efforts the company had made to cut their emissions to decrease. Curiously, Cook – one of the highest-paid CEOs in the United States – was seen rehearsing lines at the table in front of the fictional character’s entrance, while other Apple staffers also joined in with well-rehearsed jokes and facts. Employees then bragged about Apple’s environmental credentials, such as eliminating plastic from packaging and running on clean energy.

But many raised a proverbial eyebrow at the glossy skit. Journalist Peter Lloyd said: ‘You are mass producing your products in China, one of the biggest polluters in the world.’ One claim from an “Apple employee” in the skit was that the company had planted “forests” in Paraguay and Brazil.

The tech company’s claim comes after a report in Science accused a group of giant companies – including Apple – of greenwashing by making grand claims about their contributions to the environment without providing detailed reports to shareholders or the public. Marine biologist Tim Lamont was the lead author of the Science report, he told DailyMail.com: “No company reports perfectly across the board.”

Apple also boasted about the materials they use in their products in their skit, with one ’employee’ saying: ‘We also currently use 100 percent recycled aluminum in the casings of all our MacBooks, Apple TVs, Apple Watches…’ But Apple hasn’t always been proud of where their technology’s materials came from.

Apple was accused in 2016 by Amnesty International and African Resources Watch of lax oversight of its cobalt supplies. The Amnesty report alleged that children in the DRC as young as 12 were working underground, digging up the metal in mines to produce cobalt for tech giants like Apple.

In 2019, Apple was among a group of companies accused of exploiting child labor in the Democratic Republic of Congo by African families who said their children died or were seriously injured while mining cobalt to be sold to the tech giants.

If a history of profiting from slave labor and a reputation for greenwashing aren’t enough to make a mockery of Apple’s boasts, perhaps the fact that the company mass-produces its products in China — the world’s biggest polluter — will.

The skit ends with Apple CEO Tim Cook promising “Mother Nature” that “by 2030, ALL Apple devices will have a net zero climate impact.”

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