"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. The new MacBook Air reduces the carbon footprint of the computer by almost half. It will now be assembled with a shell made from a custom alloy created by the company's material team. "Apple's metallurgy team has designed an aluminium alloy that uses excess aluminium from the production process," said Grove. 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 recycled aluminium can itself be recycled. "This helps reduce the carbon footprint of the new Air by nearly 50 per cent and makes it the greenest Mac ever," continued Metz.