Greenpeace International today praised Apple Inc. for stepping up efforts to reduce toxic materials in its computers and consumer electronic devices...Greenpeace was reacting to an environmental progress report Apple published Thursday. Signed by [Apple CEO] Steve Jobs, the update gave an overview of Apple's promise last year to eliminate polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and brominated flame retardants (BFRs) from all Apple products by the end of 2008, and to remove mercury and arsenic from its displays... Greenpeace…said "If Apple has solved the challenges involved, there's no excuse for any of these companies [HP, Dell, Lenovo, Acer, Toshiba] not to follow Apple's lead on toxic chemicals elimination now…” All those companies have pledged to remove PVC and BFRs from their products by the end of next year.