However, its thickness is not the only outstanding feature. Greenpeace and other environmental organizations highly admired the fact that new MacBook Air has a 100 per cent recycled aluminium alloy shell, which reduces the carbon footprint of the computer by almost half.

During the presentation of new products, Apple representatives highlighted that creating a casing for the computer from entirely recycled aluminium was "one big goal that we've had for many years."

"We use aluminium because it has incredible strength, durability and for its sheer beauty. To achieve that we've had to rely on mining high purity ore," said Laura Grove, Apple's vice president of hardware engineering.

Apple's material team created a special aluminium alloy for the newest edition of the MacBook Air. "Apple's metallurgy team has designed an aluminium alloy that uses excess aluminium from the production process," said Grove.

"It's designed to use fine shavings of recaptured aluminium that are re-engineered down to the atomic level. This new alloy is as beautiful and robust as any we've used before," continued Laura Metz, Apple's senior product manager.

The alloy makes construction of the computer possible "without mining any new aluminium from the earth," according to Apple. The use of 100 per cent recycled aluminium in the casing has been verified by UL, a global safety consulting and certification company based in Illinois.

The fact that aluminium can be recycled numerously without losing any qualities attracts the attention the most. "This helps reduce the carbon footprint of the new Air by nearly 50 per cent and makes it the greenest Mac ever," continued Metz.

Thanks to such green approach, the new computer has 47 per cent lower carbon emissions compared with the previous generation of the same product. The calculation was made on the basis of total greenhouse gas emissions of 176 kilograms of CO2 over the lifecycle of a computer.

"With all the care and attention that we put into design and engineering, our teams work just as hard to ensure that our products are environmentally friendly," said Grove.

The promotional material for the computer states that it has a mercury-free LED-backlit display, arsenic-free display glass, is beryllium and PVC-free and comes in eco-friendly packaging.

During the launch at Brooklyn's Academy of Music, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that there are 100 million Macs currently being used. "51 per cent of Mac buyers are buying their first one, rising to 76 per cent in China," he said.