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 Â? 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.

Fanboys beware! This dude from St. Louis kicks out all the stops to the definition and raises his obsession a level higher. Yes, that's right: Jeremy Mehrle's apartment is a tribute to the Apple Macintosh. And its quite an impressive display, in fact: he has 74 Macs in his basement with 30 at the Classic bar (yes the bar is in his basement). Also in his collection are four different Apple II personal computers, 18 assorted CRT-based Macs, a Next Cube, and a 20th Anniversary Mac just to top the icing. This would've rocked had it been one of those "Get a Mac" ads. See for yourselves!

    

You can see more of his vision of Mac dedication by clicking on the Read link provided below.

Since Tech-centric people are really sensitive about how hot their technological box of choice can get, here's something that can help them feel a bit less insecure.

Despite the fact that this page over at the URL http://granulator.gg.utk.edu/~web/thermalcam is entitled "Fun with a thermal camera", their geeky endeavors into the actual temperatures of a MacBook, an Xbox 360, and a 38-inch CRT HDTV is presented in a very academic fashion. The short of the long story? They took several pieces of essential tech-gear, and put each under a thermal camera. They found out that the appliances can get hot, really, really hot.

Here are their images of the MacBook.

And here's the 38-inch HDTV CRT, followed by the Xbox 360.

The author of the site would like to note that he is not making any claims about the safety of the above products. He's just simply showing the images he took, and he is taking the time to report the results. Also, the author of the site claims that the above images were taken in conjunction his current PhD research, as test cases for calibration of their camera for future field work.

We now wonder what the PS3 looks like under a thermal camera. We also wonder how the Xbox 360 would look under a thermal cam if one of those spangly third-party cooling devices were attached to it.

Although the OLPC project's $100 laptop seems so enticing at times, maybe we should just let those who really have less in life use it and we should just move on to something else.  Recently, Apple released the $899 iMac for the education market which replaces Apple's CRT computer - the eMac.

The for educational-purposes-only iMac has a 17-inch widescreen display and a 1.83GHz Intel Core Duo processor. It is also packed with a 512MB DDR2 SDRAM, 24x Combo drive, 80GB hard drive, built-in iSight and wireless networking, microphone, and speakers.

However, the new iMac ships with the integrated Intel GMA 950 graphics chipset instead of the usual and more powerful ATI X16000 found in the consumer versions of the new iMac Core Duo. The new education-only iMac configuration is available immediately from the educational Apple store.

Tech guy Tom Ierna is the proud owner of an Apple eMac. When he found out that his beloved eMac's analog board was in need of replacement, and that a new one would cost a whopping $500 (and, in addition, that his machine couldn't qualify for Apple's warranty repair extension), he began to consider drastic measures.

Ierna spotted a Samsung 17" flatscreen monitor and came up with the bright idea of replacing the eMac's problematic old CRT with an LCD, which would allow him to bypass that faulty analog board and give his eMac a new lease on life. And his hard work paid off! His modded eMac's a beaut!

He's posted an illustrated procedure on his blog, which I've condensed and summarized for your viewing pleasure.