Apple today unveiled new environmentally friendly manufacturing policies designed to completely eliminate arsenic, polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and brominated flame retardants (BFRs) from current products by 2008. The company also forecast that it will recycle 30 per cent of its own electronic waste by 2010.

The announcement from Apple boss Steve Jobs moved the company off the bottom of the Greenpeace Green Electronics Guide, which rates large PC and mobile phone makers recycling and toxic content policies, and up to tenth place out of 14.

Greenpeace campaign co-ordinator Zeina Alhajj welcomed the move, which makes Apple's green polices transparent and accessible for the first time, as a step in the right direction.

But she added that Apple could go further by agreeing to remove all PVC and BFRs from its forthcoming iPhone, due in June, and expanding the US product take-back policy, which enables businesses and consumers to recycle old products for free by returning them to the manufacturer, to the rest of the world.

"Other companies like Nokia have already put PVC and BFR free mobiles on the market and Apple has an opportunity to do that with iPhone in June." she said. "It is unfair and represents a double standard to deny the same global take back system service available in the US for Apple customers on the rest of the planet."

Apple CEO Steve Jobs suggested that Apple was way ahead of rivals in its complete elimination of CRT monitors from its product line, higher e-waste recycling figures, and its ban on most of the chemicals covered the RoHS regulations.

"Some electronics companies can only claim their products are RoHS compliant because of certain little know exemptions granted by the EU," he said.

Far from being shamed into making changes to green policies, Apple has responded to the requests of its own Mac user base galvanised into action by the Greenpeace campaign, added Alhajj.