Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) is a standout among tech companies for its commitment to renewable energy and the environment. The company took another stride on Monday, announcing its intention to recycle any Apple product at no charge.

The company already hands out gift cards at some of its retail locations in exchange for used iPods and iPhones. All Apple retail stores will now recycle the company’s products for free, but no gift cards will be awarded for products that have no resale value.

Earlier this month Apple was named by Greenpeace as the most innovative and most aggressive technology company in its pursuit of achieving a goal of being powered 100% by renewable energy. Apple is not the only company with that goal, but combined with its other commitments to energy efficiency, it received the highest score among the 19 tech companies in the Greenpeace study.

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At the other end of the Greenpeace scale, Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) is “among the dirtiest and least transparent companies in the sector, far behind its major competitors, with zero reporting of its energy or environmental footprint to any source or stakeholder.”

Apple hired Lisa Jackson, the Obama administration’s first Adminstrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to be its vice-president for environmental initiatives. She said Monday, “What the company wants to do is use all our innovation and all of our expertise to make the planet more secure and make the environment better.”

About half of Apple’s retail stores in the United States are run entirely on renewable energy. The company has not offered a timetable for when the remaining domestic and global stores will also be switched to renewables.

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