Most of the iST sites are located in well-planned industrial parks or science parks, all of which have passed the government’s environmental assessments and are not located in environmentally sensitive areas, thus having no significant impact on the biodiversity of the surrounding environment. As a technology service company in the electronics industry, iST runs on a business and production model of providing professional services instead of production or manufacturing, so iST generates both general wastes and hazardous wastes. General waste is employee’s domestic garbage. Hazardous waste mainly comes from waste effluent from laboratories and scraps from electronic components.

In 2023, iST generated 35.37 tons of general industrial waste and 8.42 tons of hazardous industrial waste, all of which were disposed of by qualified cleaning suppliers in accordance with the law. The general Industrial wastes from some of the plants (Taiyuan, Neihu, and Changyi plants) were disposed of by the building’s management committee.

The following waste management measures are taken to ensure that the Company has no significant impact on the environment through proper disposal of waste.

1. After the department sorts and stores the waste in accordance with its characteristics, the Environmental Health and Safety (EHS) personnel look for lawful waste clearance and disposal service providers depending on the type of the waste, and then make assessment and enter into an agreement after confirming they have acquired the EHS related permit and license. We perform on-site audit of each waste disposal service provider every year and assess the renewal of the agreement and partnership in accordance with the compliance of the EHS related permit and license, management of the waste storage area, operation of the pollution prevention equipment, and on-site safety management of the operations.
2. Hazardous industrial waste is subject to testing conducted by a third party according to its characteristics every year. The purpose of this test is to confirm that the property of the waste complies with the waste code and the disposition approach. The temporary storage and generation volumes of the waste in every factory area are reported every month to confirm a mass and energy balance is achieved between the generation and disposition of the waste.
3. We perform inspection and audit of the waste storage site and make records accordingly to confirm the sorting and storage status of the waste, the safety of the storage environment, and the compliance with the law.
4. Before waste is cleared and leaves the factory, the “Triplicate Delivery Manifest for Joint Disposal and Control of Industrial Waste under Commission” is reported online. The vehicles used for clearance of the waste must have a GPS for control during the waste clearing process to ensure the waste is transported to the disposal organization appropriately. After confirming the disposal organization has received the batch of waste concerned, we enter the system website of the Ministry of Environment to confirm that the waste clearance and disposal service provider has reported the clearance of the waste and the status of the disposal to ensure that the waste is finally disposed in compliance with the law.

Besides reduction at the source and searching for alternative materials to reduce the amount of waste generated from manufacturing in the plants, we also effectively reuse the waste to collect, sort, reduce, and recycle; e.g. we recycle and reuse the sample packaging materials and wooden pallets. The total weight of recyclable items from recycling waste for 2023 is 11.18 tons. By implementing waste sorting in the plant, iST effectively sorted out waste paper, waste plastics, waste metals, and other recyclable items; therefore, the amount of recyclable materials increased year by year. In 2023, the waste density was reduced by 3.8%, achieving the 1% reduction in waste density. The table below shows the status of waste disposal and waste density in 2023.

In addition, to reduce GHG emissions, we are looking for a waste disposal site with that closer to Hsinchu as the first priority. We implement the waste disposal plan and the delivery manifest checking mechanism to check the waste disposal service provider. There was no leakage of waste in 2023.