Apple has issued the following press release, verbatim: Apple today unveiled its first class of 15 black- and brown-owned businesses on the cutting edge of green technology and clean energy, who will join the company’s Impact Accelerator to support equity and opportunity in the environmental sector. Part of Apple’s Racial Equity and Justice Initiative, this program will help to combat systemic barriers to opportunity, while also advancing innovative solutions for communities most impacted by climate change.
The 15 businesses are based across the US — from Silicon Valley in California, to Detroit, Michigan, to tribal nations across the Midwest — and driving innovation in energy efficiency, solar, green chemistry, recycling, and other environmental areas. Many share a specific focus on bringing clean energy, opportunity, and vital services to vulnerable and underserved communities.
“We are thrilled to welcome our first Impact Accelerator class, and look forward to seeing how these innovative businesses will expand their work to protect the planet and our communities,” said Lisa Jackson, Apple’s vice president of Environment, Policy, and Social Initiatives. “On our journey to our 2030 carbon neutral goal for our supply chain and products, we’re determined to help create a greener and more equitable future for all people. The businesses we’re partnering with today are poised to become tomorrow’s diverse and innovative industry leaders, creating ripples of change to help communities everywhere adapt to the urgent challenges posed by climate change.”
Selected companies will participate in customized training, and have access to Apple experts and an alumni community. The Impact Accelerator is tailored to support black-, brown-, and Native American and indigenous-owned businesses that share Apple’s focus on innovation and commitment to the environment as they achieve their next stage of development. Following the three-month virtual program, the companies will be considered for opportunities to act as suppliers to Apple as it works to become carbon neutral for its supply chain and products by 2030.
Meet the Companies
BlocPower
Founder and CEO: Donnel Baird
Climate Technology Company in Brooklyn, NY
BlocPower aims to make American cities greener, smarter, and healthier by turning aging, inefficient buildings into state-of-the-art structures. Since its founding in 2014, BlocPower has retrofitted more than 1,200 buildings in disadvantaged communities across 26 cities with smart, eco-friendly, electric heating and cooling systems.
Mosaic Global Transportation
Founder, President, and CEO: Maurice H. Brewster
Transportation Firm in San Jose, CA
Mosaic Global Transportation is a minority-owned, multimillion-dollar international ground transportation company that specializes in employee shuttles, commuter services, and meeting and events businesses. Aiming to replace gasoline-operated vehicles that are used for these programs with electric vehicles, the company is deeply committed to giving back to the community.
Volt Energy Utility
Co-Founder and CEO: Gilbert Campbell III
Utility-Solar Energy Development Firm in Washington, D.C.
Volt Energy Utility develops, finances, and operates utility-scale solar projects for private and public clients. One of the firm’s unique offerings is the Environmental Justice Power Purchase Agreement which serves as a funding source for various programs dedicated to expanding the benefits of clean energy to underserved communities and constituencies. Campbell co-founded Volt Energy over 10 years ago, which developed several distributed generation projects. He founded Volt Energy Utility with the clear intent to provide services and expertise to satisfy the increased demands for utility-scale solar.
Bench-Tek Solutions
Founder and CEO: Maria Castellon
Manufacturing and Automation Company in Santa Clara, CA
Bench-Tek Solutions is a Silicon Valley-based manufacturing company that specializes in making laboratory and industrial workbenches. They focus on building ergonomic and environmentally friendly furniture for different types of workspaces. Maria Castellon founded the company in 2002 after immigrating to the US from Mexico for college. She found work as a janitor at IBM, which led her to launch her career at a workbench manufacturing company and ultimately start her own business. Today, Bench-Tek operates with a diverse workforce, serves a vast clientele, and maintains a strong standing in the manufacturing industry.
GreenTek Solutions
Founder and CEO: Anuar Garcia
Recycling and Reuse Company in Houston, TX
GreenTek Solutions is committed to repurposing, refurbishing, recycling, and reusing technology products and offering extensive IT asset services for buying, selling, and liquidating equipment. The company is consistently finding ways to anticipate future tech trends, environmental concerns, and client needs.
Diversified Chemical Technologies, Inc.
President and Chief Financial Officer: Karl Johnson
Chemical Safety Firm in Detroit, Michigan
Diversified Chemical Technologies, Inc. is a technology, specialty chemicals, and services company with manufactured product lines in adhesives, process chemicals, CIP/COP cleaners, facility cleaners, metal working fluids and lubricants, and MRO service solutions. The company operates on the Diversified 1 Systems model to promote excellence, stewardship, and sustainability in their leadership and throughout the company, believing it creates value for their stakeholders, reduces their carbon footprint, and keeps them socially responsible. The company started by Hill in 1971 began as a manufacturer of janitorial chemicals and has evolved to supplying the largest consumer products, healthcare, automotive, and general manufacturing companies with a broad spectrum of custom-developed product solutions.
Oceti Sakowin Power Authority
Chairman and Head of the Board of Directors: Lyle Jack
Clean Energy Developer in Tribal Regions Across the Dakotas
The Oceti Sakowin Power Authority is an independent, nonprofit governmental entity formed by six Sioux tribes to jointly develop tribal renewable energy resources by financing, developing, constructing, and operating power generation and transmission facilities for the wholesale market. Their mission is to work together to deliver power and sustainable development, bringing jobs and economic development to their reservation communities, and preserving the earth for future generations. This power project is on track to create large-scale wind and solar power developments in the country with plans to produce up to 2 gigawatt hours of emissions-free electricity in the Midwest.
Vericool, Inc.
Founder and CEO: Darrell Jobe
Packaging and Shipment Company in Livermore, CA
Vericool is a company focused on making sustainable, environmentally friendly packaging that can replace expanded polystyrene (EPS) and other petroleum-based foam packaging for shipments that need to stay protected. Vericool produces patented, high-performing packaging solutions made from natural ingredients that revolutionize the way cold chain products are shipped. Vericool is committed to a diverse workforce and reducing prison recidivism by providing equal employment opportunities to those in need of a second chance.
Dunamis Clean Energy Partners
Founder and CEO: Natalie King
Environmental Solutions Company in Southfield, MI
Dunamis Clean Energy Partners is a technology, manufacturing, and engineering firm focused on energy efficiency and environmental service solutions. Dunamis’s founder and CEO, Natalie King, led the company to become a multimillion-dollar corporation with over 150 employees throughout Southeastern Michigan.
VMX International
Founder, President, and CEO: Vickie Lewis
Environmental Services Company in Detroit, MI
As an environmental services company, VMX International provides solid waste collection, recycling, regulatory, and project management services to government, commercial, industrial, and construction customers across the US and Canada. Since it was founded in 2001, VMX International has grown and diversified to a staff of over 50 full-time employees stationed across the nation.
Argent Associates
Founder, President, and CEO: Beatriz Manetta
Technology Consultancy in Plano, TX
Founded in 1998, Argent Associates has built its legacy by creating innovative supply chain solutions while keeping its commitment to environmental protection. Manetta immigrated to the US from Argentina as a young girl and worked for 20 years in corporate America. She used her learnings to launch her own business where she is now president and CEO. Today, Argent’s emphasis on a diverse technology-driven ecosystem has won the company numerous awards for their work, leadership, and diversity in the workforce.
Inspectorio
Co-Founder and CEO: Carlos Moncayo
Supply Chain Solutions Firm in Minneapolis, MN
Inspectorio is a cloud-based SaaS solution focused on creating dynamic and risk-based quality and compliance programs with the goal of building an interconnected, sustainable, and transparent supply chain. Today it is used by over 15,000 network participants across the globe, including some of the largest brands and retailers in the world. Moncayo was the youngest Latin American CEO to join the Group of Fifty and was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum.
Group O
CEO: Gregg Ontiveros
Supply Chain Solutions Firm in Milan, IL
Founded in 1974 as a small Midwest packaging distributor, Group O has grown into one of the largest Latino-owned businesses in the United States. As an end-to-end business process outsourcer serving some of the world’s largest brands, Group O specializes in integrated supply chain solutions designed to optimize operations while reducing waste. They are committed to environmental stewardship through several programs and policies that reduce not only their own carbon footprint, but that of their clients. As a certified MBE, Group O is dedicated to building a diverse workforce in addition to working with and mentoring other minority-owned businesses and suppliers.
RFG-MPW Environmental & Facility Services
Chairman and CEO: Roderick Rickman
Industrial Cleaning and Environmental Service Firm in Detroit, MI
RFG-MPW is the leading provider of integrated, technology-based industrial cleaning, facility management, water purification, container management, and environmental services in North America. The company assists in enhancing operational efficiencies, improving reliability, and minimizing costs to ensure their clients have a safer and cleaner work environment to deliver high-quality products.
L2S Engineering, LLC
Founder: Laurie Ann Sibani
Mechanical, Electrical, and Plumbing Engineering Design Firm in Leesburg, VA and Apollo Beach, FL
L2S Engineering, LLC is a Native American-, woman-owned mechanical, electrical, and plumbing engineering design firm that provides services in multiple states. Its mission is to achieve new heights in engineering excellence by providing services that will help their clients achieve their sustainable environmental goals and reduce their carbon footprint. Sibani is an electrical engineer with extensive design and project management experience, and prides herself on developing efficient solutions for her clients.
For more information about Apple’s commitment to protecting the environment, visit apple.com/environment.
Source: Apple Inc.
Apple’s leadership are, by definition, among the biggest racists on earth.
Fact: Apple’s leadership identifies, sorts, categorizes, and rewards people by the color of their skin.
Fact: These 15 companies are not the BEST 15 “green technology and clean energy” companies that Apple could find to fund advancements, they are merely the BLACKEST and/or BROWNEST.
rac·ism
the belief that different races possess distinct characteristics, abilities, or qualities, especially so as to distinguish them as inferior or superior to one another.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
Tim Cook sure is one deeply confused lily-white leftist.
Furthermore, Leftists, Socialists, Democrats, and Establishment Globalists have turned their backs on religion, but the human soul knows there is a greater force and so it innately searches for God.
Leftists, Socialists, Democrats, and Establishment Globalists like Tim Cook, Bill Gates, Laurene Powell Jobs, Jeff Bezos, etc. have substituted “Climate Change” for “God.”
“Climate Change” is the “God” of Leftists, Socialists, Democrats, and Establishment Globalists. This is why they hated Trump so much. Not for the mean tweets, but for canceling the Paris Agreement, an international treaty, immediately upon assuming office. It was among the very first travesties into which their installed puppet Biden re-entered – illegally, of course (treaties like this require congressional approval in America).
They hated their “God” being denied and would do anything — perhaps even unleash a global pandemic and/or aid in promoting unending COVID fear porn to fuel continued economic disruption — to install a puppet who would “follow the science” (lol) in service of their false idol.
If the rest of the world goes to hell via Fauxident Dementia’s handler’s incompetence, so be it.
Fishy, fishy, fishy:
“First,” you have been and continue to be a voice of reason. People would do well to consider your opinions on most matters. Even here, where I have found a possible disagreement, there is no denying that your ultimate point is solid. I submit however, there are factors that allow for a broader assessment of Apple’s efforts here.
For the sake of examination, based purely on merit, perhaps these companies are not the greatest green tech companies out there. I don’t know if this is true, but I will assume it is. They many not be the best, but they are companies that represent a vastly different “black narrative,” than the one that the media, the left, and Democrats try to force down our throats on a day to day basis. In fact they demonstrate that THERE IS INDEED something that can be referred to as “Black Excellence,” or “Black Achievement.” Booker T. Washing would be proud.
Apple is rewarding A NEW BLACK NARRATIVE, (though they probably don’t realize it) rather than the same old DEMOCRAT “SAVE SAMBO” blackface Step-n-Fetchit BEYOND RACIST narrative. The new narrative says this is what can be achieved by not just whites, not just blacks, but by anyone. The new “Woke” Save Sambo generation will scream that there is no such thing as black excellence because so called “systemic racism” prevents it from existing. The university Critical Racist Theory morons will have you believe that the only way these companies can exist is if their black creators kowtowed to white men and white culture in general.
In this case, Apple has given the finger to generic leftist dogma and Apple rewarded the American Way, and for that, I’m all for it.
Show me successful black enterprise and achievements any day of the week, instead of another stupid Black History Month Calendar filled with easily forgotten apocrypha.
Still Apple and others must learn that the deepest issues with Black America lay embedded in our culture and there is no fixing that except at the child level. Change, in this case, must begin with efforts to correct the black world view, starting at the toddler level, teaching us to read, write, and generally be good people. A revamping of the entire educational system is needed starting with breaking the stranglehold teacher’s union have around the necks of black children. THEIR MINDS CAN’T BREATHE.
I think the thing some people are missing here is that is is not “affirmative action.” These people have already succeeded. This is confirmation. Not affirmation.
Ok. heh. Let me explain it this way. I am in favor of the meritocracy. I wish to demonstrate to others that hard work, achievement, and excellence are the keys to success in America, not affirmative action. So I single out companies where this has happened. Apple is big into green tech. I might have chosen artificial intelligence or computer science. Do you see the difference in that and affirmative action?
In one case a person is being rewarded because he his black or brown, in the other he is being recognized by achieving in spite of the fact that he is black or brown.
I agree with your assessment. Success should be rewarded – and regardless of skin color, but I understand your point. It’s like the old Cosby Show – showing a black doctor and a black lawyer raising a black nuclear family in America was/is important and meaningful.
I’m just not sure that the majority of Apple’s shareholders agree with these expenditures or that Apple, after calling it “Racial Equity and Justice Initiative” understands why “affirmative action” is bad.
The basic problem remains: Identifying people by skin color to do anything is inherently racist. It reinforces and elevates a cosmetic difference into the most important characteristic / definition of a person, which is evil.
I reiterate: Tim Cook sure is one deeply confused lily-white leftist.
An Apple that minds its business and concentrates on building the best products period is preferable to all of the attempts at social engineering, because most fail.
It doesn’t get any better than this: a dialogue and “cross-pollenization” of ideas; philosophies and guidance from the 2 most intelligent people on this forum.
In this case, FirstThen built a good foundation and framing for a house and then BrotherThelonious completed and painted the house.
I love reading your thoughts and always find them to be enlightening, truthful and fearless. Many thanks for today’s contributions and for all the other times you’ve inspired us.
Yes indeed Theo, you have your finger squarely on the pulse of the problem.
“starting at the toddler level, teaching us to read, write, and generally be good people” is the SOLUTION!
Its unfortunate teacher’s unions have too much power and worry more abut their salaries and shuffling kids to the next grade abandoning the difficult task of earning their paycheck — teaching ALL children to be proficient and not pass them along to someone else.
While studies have shown the two parent family is ideal to keep kids from the temptation of gangs, guns and easy drug money, certainly millions of single moms of all colors get it done everyday.
Excellent opinions in several posts. Bravo…
Anyone who believes Biden-Harris got 81+ million legitimate votes — the most ever cast for any presidential candidate in American history, by a wide margin — really needs to lay off the hard drugs.
LOL.
Also, a bit of sobering reality for the illogical gun-grabbers like Tim “Green Squirt Gun Emoji” Cook:
Taliban is Pashto for “Woke.” Actually its for “Student” but in reflection, the methods used by the Taliban are strikingly similar to the authoritarian mandates of the western world’s “woke” phenomenon.
I can only hope that people watch the horrible images of people chasing American planes and realize this is what it looks like when people try to escape to freedom from authoritarianism. This is what happens when you surrender too much of your freedom to wack jobs.
There will certainly be EQUITY and EQUALITY under the Taliban.
I can also only hope that America has finally learned its lesson. Nation building doesn’t work. Even the world’s greatest military cannot strike down an idea. I’ve seen us cut and run from too many little countries in my life. All things considered, perhaps Joe Biden didn’t handle his version of “Peace with Honor” so well, but from day one we knew this would be the outcome.
“The attacker much vanquish. The defender must merely survive.”
https://redstate.com/streiff/2021/08/17/did-recalcitrant-military-leaders-set-the-afghanistan-debacle-into-motion-n428432
https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2021/08/17/bidens-afghanistan-debacle-may-have-been-intentional-n428183
Hey, but no mean tweets!
Someday you might learn that farm fields don’t vote. The simpletons who did vote for Lyin’ Donnie are statistically less educated and less self sufficient than the ones who voted for the relatively more honest candidate— another proven fact that you continue to ignore. Nobody likes liars except willful idiots like you.
The simpletons who voted for Joey are the ones supporting the man who proudly voted, on the Senate floor, on record and alongside racists and segregationists to keep Blacks segregated from whites- Who said President Obama was the FIRST mainstream African American who was articulate, bright and CLEAN” and who, while on the campaign trail in 2020, raged at Black reporter Errol Barnett during an interview “ARE YOU A JUNKIE?” (Things if given a million years, JOEY’d never say, nor ask of WHITE men).
A$$ Hat? My FIRST school out of high school (majored in math, chemistry and physics) was Naval Nuclear Propulsion School.
I do believe I wiped my backside with your so-called “education. I do believe that’s a proven fact.
And no one likes supporters of RACISTS like JOEY, except for leftist hypocrites like you.
Nick,
Oh, I see you saw the counties portion.
Forget about Trump, as you clearly have TDS, just as the establishment intended (you weak-minded, easily-brainwashed pawn).
Just explain the 396 country discrepancy between Satan, oops, I meant Saint 🤣Obama and Joe Dementia.
(crickets)
Then explain the bellwether counties and the other discrepancies.
While I could be wrong, the “Nick” I know would not write that post. As we have seen for years, personally happened to me dozens of times, a scumbag imposter without a conscience would use my screen name to post polar opposite opinions.
I suspect the same happened here..
Awesome.
Nuff said…
No surprise here. Tim Cook, Lisa Jackson, etc. are Democrats.
The Democrat Party founded racism. The Democrats fought The Civil War to protect and preserve slavery.
The Republican Party was formed to abolish slavery.
Thank God that the good guys won The Civil War, but that didn’t stop the Democrats. They soon formed their terrorist wing, the KKK, to try to force black and white Republicans to vote Democrat and then the Democrats’ Jim Crow laws.
Now Tim Cook, Lisa Jackson, etc. are taking millions of dollars of Apple shareholders’ money, and misusing it for leftist social engineering follies such as this.
Apple shareholders should demand accountability.
Pissing money away on a Fairytail
Is that anything like a ponytail?
Tim Cook lost the plot years ago. He’s been bastardizing Steve Jobs’ Apple brand for his own twisted ends for years.
Hey, Timmy Pipeline:
Their money, they can do what they like with it.
100% Wrong. It’s THE SHAREHOLDERS’ money. Not Tim Cook’s. Not Obama admin refugee Lisa Jackson’s. It’s AAPL SHAREHOLDERS’ money.
Uh, “their” includes the shareholders. If the shareholders don’t like the way the money is being spent, they can choose to elect new board members who will spend the money the way the shareholders want it spent. Until that day arrives, Apple has tacit approval to spend the money they way they like.
Yes, and no one has to support racism by giving them more.
Making decisions based upon race is pure racism.
Well this ought to help get them lawyers and accountants…!!
Well, taking Apple’s lead. I guess I’ll be select my heart surgeon based on the color of their skin.
Be sure it’s someone who was bottom of class, because choosing by grades/academic performance alone is discrimination.
Wait – I thought it was Trump and his followers who didn’t like “elites” — you know, the most qualified people. Make up your mind: is expertise in a field good or bad? Since I believe in facts and science, I want the best professional for the job, whether it’s heart surgeon, Surgeon General or head of the CDC.
But since the facts are that America is still a very unequal society, I’m in favor of putting a thumb on the scale so opportunities to excel (or own a home, or get VC funding, or get into a top college) are open to groups traditionally and continually marginalized (women, persons of color, etc.), which, sadly, are all those who tend not to resemble those already in power.
C/mon, tell me the system isn’t rigged for rich, white men from the moment they’re born…
”
C/mon, tell me the system isn’t rigged for rich, white men from the moment they’re born…”
OK, it’s not rigged…
Wait- I thought it was JOEY supporters who opposed racism- Yet simp the man on a daily basis who proudly voted, on the Senate floor, on record and alongside racists and segregationists to keep Blacks segregated from whites (I don’t want my kids to grow up in a jungle. A RACIAL jungle). The man who said President Obama was the first mainstream African American who was “articulate, bright and clean”. The man who raged at Black reporter Errol Barnett during a 2020 interview “ARE YOU A JUNKIE?” (Both of which are things, if given a million years, JOEY’D never ask, nor say of white men). The man who was so upset a white didn’t serve him, he stormed “ You can’t walk into a 7-11 without having an Indian accent. I’m not joking”. Shall I go on? I’ve got FIFTY YEARS worth of JOEY’s racist filth to share. JOEY is the walking, talking epitome of SYSTEMIC RACISM, yet every.democrat.alive looks the other way.
Want a good read? Try Malcolm X’s speech- The one beginning “The white liberal is the worst enemy to America, and the worst enemy to the black man. Let me explain what I mean by the white liberal”.
Malcolm X lays it out. The white liberal, above ALL ELSE, wants “free stuff”.
And they’ll simp the nastiest racist into the White House in order to get it.
“Poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids”, right?
GAFFES? For FIFTY YEARS?
C’mon man, that’s RACISM.
WriterGuy
Your attitude is exactly what’s wrong with our country, and most people are tired of it.
Get over what happened in the past. It was bad but there are far more terrible things that occurred.
Your guilt is not our cross to bear…
Agreed. Let’s call it what it is… a reparation.
In Apple’s case a voluntary one.
So, Apple is racist against white people. I really hate what Apple is becoming under Timmy.
Buying Apple products or not eating fast food is an act of discrimination or discernment.
To discern based on ability, quality or character is good. To discern based on ethnicity, gender or tribe is bad.
MLK 101: judged by the content of character but not color of skin.
The racism and intellectual dishonesty on this thread is pretty extreme, even for this site. You act as if VC funding always goes to the proposals with the most merit, and NOT primarily to people who are friends with, or from the same social circles as, or to those who come from the same afluent neighborhoods as those making the choices.
You want to willfully ignore the reality of centuries worth of racial inequality? Of the studies that show (over and over) that people with Afro- or Hispanic-sounding names are less likely to be hired, get approved for loans, or receive equal treatment when compared to identical histories with “white” names? Go ahead, but don’t puff yourselves up with moral superiority when you do it. It just makes you come across as a bunch of Kens and Karens, whining how life isn’t treating you the way you thought it was supposed to.
That’s right, everyone, the only ones allowed to puff themselves up with moral superiority are Dem/Lib/Progs.
That’s why they do it 24/7/365. 366 in a leap year.
Oh please. Recognizing the world the way it is, not the way we want it to be, is not moral superiority. And the only ones puffed up with hot air on this site are you and your ilk.
Nope, the most puffed up arrogant know it alls are Leftists exactly as First posted. Those on the Right use common sense, logic and most importantly critical thinking. The Left I’ll only repeats talking point dogma they can’t explain or defend…
We know how you feel about the USA history of slavery and discrimination, but how do you feel about state sponsored slavery in August 18, 2021 ? How do you feel about systematic genocide, forced abortions, rape, murder, slavery and forced organ harvesting of minority communities of color inside the CCP. How do you feel about Apple’s 38% profit margin and its business relations with the criminal state of the CCP.
Are you ok that Apple virtue signals back in merica but the same Apple enables, turns a blind eye and profits off the largest slave market and ethic genocide in modern history?
How brown does one have to be? Is Tim Cook from Alabama buying into the historic racist trope of “one drop” being sufficient for contamination? Do others not meeting his arbitrary criteria get a separate drinking fountain? Really, how brown does one have to be? Maybe Timmy can have Steve’s iPhone assess brown-ness and report our scores so we know if we can apply.
So- In order to promote “equity”, one must engage in racism.
Got it.
Is that like when JOEY B says that President Obama was the first mainstream African American who was “articulate, bright and CLEAN”, it isn’t racist?
Riiiiight.
Good grief. How nice and racist of them. Apple is as lost as the rest, Silicon Valley is the 21st century’s greatest joke.
Dose a tan can’t as brown ? 2 of the women in the poster look like white women. Or do women get a different set of rules. If a person identifies as a women then do they get “women” rules. Is it yet possible to self identify as a person of a different ethnicity yet ? Is that a thing yet ? Is their an order of operations when self identifying; is it better to switch gender or race first ?