Former Vice President Al Gore sits on the board of directors of Apple Inc. The company’s ads have touted Gandhi and Martin Luther King. Its youthful, tech-loving customers are the kind who drive hybrid cars, eat organic food, and recycle everything. “It has a very hip, current, leading-edge brand; a drive to innovate; and a willingness to change the way we engage with music and media and movies,” says Wood Turner, project director of climatecounts.org, a three-year-old website that analyzes and rates companies’ efforts to control carbon emissions. “The consumer has always believed that Apple must be environmentally responsible as well.”

In fact, Apple has for years lagged way behind stodgier rivals like IBM Corp., Dell Inc., and Hewlett-Packard Co. in environmental activism, including Turner’s rankings. It didn’t join the Electronic Industry Citizenship Coalition (a trade group focusing on environmental issues and working conditions) until two years after the others had founded the group in 2004.

But suddenly—nearly 40 years after the original Earth Day—Apple seems to have discovered a green consciousness.

It jumped 41 points on climatecounts.org’s 2009 rankings, issued in late November—from a minuscule 11 out of 100 possible points to 52—because of actions like publicly reporting its greenhouse-gas emissions. It ostentatiously resigned from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in October to protest the group’s opposition to federal climate-change legislation. Socially responsible shareholder organizations like the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, Domini Investments, and Trillium Asset Management say that the company this year has been much more responsive to environmental concerns on issues such as phasing out the use of polyvinyl chlorides and recycling of electronic waste.

“They recently have begun to demonstrate a lot more environmental leadership,” says Jonas Kron, a senior social research analyst at Boston-based Trillium, which runs about $900 million in socially responsible assets for churches, endowments, foundations, nonprofits, and wealthy individuals.

After her group (which represents some 300 religious institutions with more than $100 billion in assets) filed shareholder resolutions at Apple on recycling and sustainability reporting in 2006 and this year—getting a respectable 10 percent and 8 percent of the vote, respectively—ICCR executive director Laura Berry says that “we’re definitely seeing more progress” in conversations with the company.

Probably the most noticeable change, according to activists, is the vast amount of environmental reporting now posted on the Apple website—accompanied by beautiful, easy-to-read graphics, of course. One example: detailed, product-by-product environmental statistics, including greenhouse-gas emissions in kilograms and power consumption for various operating modes. In addition, the company in October announced that it had eliminated PVCs from all new iMacs and MacBooks in the U.S. and most of the Western Hemisphere. That same month, it announced that all new Macs with display screens would have mercury-free LED backlight technology.