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Another take is that these kind of sustainable practices are desirable to Apple's high-value employees. By acting in a way that increases the retention of those employees and helps with recruiting new ones with similar priorities, they are investing in the company's future.

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A better way of achieving that would be to set aside a bucket of money to direct towards work that staff would like to see. The staff could then vote for where that money could be spent. It might be solar energy, or it could be cancer research. That would be much more direct and measurable. Berkshire Hathaway does the same thing with its investors - gives them the say where the company spends its charitable contributions.

It's not obvious to me that what you describe is a better way. The two approaches are not mutually exclusive and what I described is not about charitable contributions. It's about actual business processes and business decisions, which are difficult to argue should be made using votes.

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