It recently came to Apple Inc. that some environmental organizations are criticizing it for not being a good model in terms of removing toxic chemicals from its new products as well as recycling old products.

CEO Steve Jobs came up then with a press release highlighting his company's plans about the matter. Jobs revealed though that these measures aren't exactly new, and that they've been doing this long before the said complaints made mass media. It's just that he felt the need to inform Apple's consumers and stakeholders because the above mentioned allegations are rather serious.

The list is quite long and the Read link should take to Jobs' complete statement. But some of the most important highlights include:

• Apple completely eliminated the use of CRTs in mid-2006. Dell, Gateway, Hewlett Packard and Lenovo still ship CRT displays today.
• Apple products met both the spirit and letter of the RoHS restrictions on cadmium, hexavalent chromium and brominated flame retardants years before RoHS went into effect.
• Apple plans to completely eliminate the use of arsenic in all of its displays by the end of 2008.
• Apple plans to reduce and eventually eliminate the use of mercury by transitioning to LED backlighting for all displays when technically and economically feasible.
• Apple plans to completely eliminate the use of PVC and BFRs in its products by the end of 2008.
• Apple recycled 13 million pounds of e-waste in 2006, which is equal to 9.5% of the weight of all products Apple sold seven years earlier.
• We expect this percentage to grow to 13% in 2007, and to 20% in 2008. By 2010, we forecast recycling 19 million pounds of e-waste per year — nearly 30% of the product weight we sold seven years earlier.
• All the e-waste we collect in North America is processed in the U.S., and nothing is shipped overseas for disposal.
• Apple products are designed using high quality materials that are in high demand from recyclers.

Apple, Acer, Motorola, and Lenovo are among the worst polluters, according to Greenpeace, while Nokia and Dell just barely passed. Greenpeace ranked major electronics companies according to what they were doing to remove the harmful chemicals in their gadgets, phones, and computers. Also, Greenpeace ranked the companies according to their policies about taking responsibility for their products when these are thrown away by their customers (for example, companies should recycle old components as much as possible and they should process and dispose of the chemical waste properly). Like all other piles of garbage, the amount of toxic waste caused by electronics ("e-waste") is growing, and it often gets dumped in poor developing countries.

Greenpeace's rankings (points are out of 10; 10 is the highest possible score):

7: Nokia - Needs to improve recycling program.
7: Dell - Some models still have the worst chemicals, but has a good program of taking back their toxic trash.
5.7: Hewlett Packard
5.3: Sony Ericsson
5: Samsung
4.7: Sony
4.3: LGE
3.3: Panasonic
3: Toshiba
3: Fujitsu-Siemens
2.7: Apple
2.3: Acer
1.7: Motorola
1.3: Lenovo

Greenpeace will update the rankings four times a year. And as for Apple scoring so low, the Greenpeace article had this to say: "It is disappointing to see Apple ranking so low in the overall guide. They are meant to be world leaders in design and marketing, they should also be world leaders in environmental innovation."

If you think about it, at the rate manufacturers in general are going, updating their existing products or developing new ones, the technology that we knew maybe 2-3 months ago, has suddenly become obsolete. Now what to do with the "obsolete products" that we have acquired during the course of our tech life? Sure we can make a museum of it. Watch as it's price hit the roof because of it being a relic and make a killing over at eBay. Or we could dispose of them properly and send them off to a recycling plant.

Australia, lead by the Australian Information Industry Association, is a favorite among major computer-makers such as HP, Dell, and IBM, that already offer successful recycling programs in the land down under. But it seems like although Apple has began its global recycling initiative in 1996, with efforts in the US, Canada, Japan and Europe, the campaign has not started in Australia.

"Apple doesn’t have a recycling program in Australia like we do in the U.S.; however, we are currently talking to the AIIA about creating a potential program,” said Apple spokesperson John Marks.

Griffith University electronic waste expert Sunil Heart said there are more than nine million computers in use around Australia, and this year a further 2.1 million computers will enter the market, while more than three million are expected to become obsolete. She hopes that there will be initiative from Apple to also make a computer take-back in that part of the globe.