Apple has issued a statement in response to growing criticism over its environmental policies. 

The statement, attributed to chief executive Steve Jobs, outlines the vendor's environmental policies and points out the shortcomings of competing PC manufacturers.

"On investigating Apple's current practices and progress towards these goals, I was surprised to learn that in many cases Apple is ahead of, or will soon be ahead of, most of its competitors in these areas," said the statement.

Apple is facing growing pressure from environmental groups and shareholders to clean up its practices after a Greenpeace study named Apple as the worst offender among major PC manufacturers.  

Jobs claimed that the report was skewed and inaccurate. "In one environmental group's recent scorecard, Dell, HP and Lenovo all scored higher than Apple because of their plans (or 'plans for releasing plans' in the case of HP)," he said. 

"In reality, Apple is ahead of all of these companies in eliminating toxic chemicals from its products."

Jobs highlighted several areas in the manufacture and disposal process in which he claimed that Apple is ahead of competing brands, including the use of hazardous materials and recycling programmes.

"A typical CRT [monitor] contains approximately 3lbs of lead. In mid-2006, Apple became the first company in the computer industry to completely eliminate CRTs," wrote Jobs. "Dell, Gateway, HP and Lenovo still ship CRTs today."

Apple also talked up its recycling programme, a favourite target of the Greenpeace campaign.

Jobs claimed that his company does not ship any of its recycled computers overseas for disposal, and that Apple expects to recycle 13 per cent of the total weight of past sales by the end of the year.

The total weight figure represents the amount of material recycled as a percentage of the total sold seven years earlier, the general point at which most PCs are considered obsolete. The system was first used to measure recycling volume by Dell.