Disclosure on Management Approach
Environmental policy
We have had a Corporate Environment Policy since 1993, which reflects a proactive attitude towards environmental protection, going beyond mere compliance with international and local regulations. The purpose of the policy is to establish the major principles for improving environmental performance, allowing ST to become one of the best industrial companies in this respect and to obtain recognition from stakeholders and society in general for environmentally-friendly operations. The policy is guided by the 16 principles of the International Chamber of Commerce Business Charter for Sustainable Development and is designed to support compliance with the Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS) and the ISO 14001 international standard.
Our Environmental policy translates the high level commitments reflected in our code of conduct, The Principles for Sustainable Excellence, into principles that can be concretely implemented through our internal procedures and activities.
Environmental certifications
All 14 of our manufacturing sites are certified to the international environmental standard, ISO 14001 and have EMAS validation.
Environmental steering committees and top management responsibility
The company’s environmental strategy and its implementation are overseen by ST’s Corporate Environment, Health and Safety Steering Committee. Georges Auguste, the Executive Vice President for Quality Education and Sustainable Development, chairs this committee and reports on performance to the CEO on a quarterly basis.
Each manufacturing site has an environmental steering committee, chaired by the site manager and a chemicals committee to ensure and oversee the correct use of all chemical products with special attention to hazardous substances. An environmental team is present at each site to manage all aspects of environmental performance, implementing the Environmental Policy and providing quarterly performance reports to top management. A central Environment and Health and Safety (EHS) organization exists to support continuous improvement across the company and coordinate between the two major manufacturing entities for Front-end and Back-end sites.
Environmental objectives and the Environment, Health and Safety Decalogue
In 1995, ST issued the first Environmental Decalogue, a set of ten targets created to help the company reduce its impact on the environment. We were one of the first companies to set measurable, time-defined goals for environmental performance and to commit to them in public – publishing our Decalogue as a booklet and distributing it widely to our employees, suppliers, customers and partners. The Decalogue was first revised in 1999, and in 2005, to mark the 10th anniversary of the first Decalogue, we published a new edition, which includes specific health and safety targets. It expresses our high-level objectives to guide the company in continuously improving our environmental and health and safety performance.
Click here to see ST 4th EHS Decalogue
The EHS Decalogue is used as a guide when setting specific Corporate Annual Targets (CATs), which are met using the nine criteria of the Business Excellence model of the EFQM (European Foundation for Quality Management). One of the ‘results’ categories is ‘society results’, which is used to ensure that environmental objectives across the company are set within a common structured framework. Our results are reported and evaluated versus these objectives on a quarterly basis under the direct supervision of the top management.
Environmental accounting and reporting
At ST we use numerous indicators and reporting methods to ensure that we meet our environmental targets. These cover all key aspects of environmental performance relevant to our sector, including energy management, water, chemicals, waste and greenhouse gas emissions.
Our environmental accounting method monitors environmental costs versus savings from the use of energy, water and chemicals. We use the Environmental Burden Method (developed with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development) to measure the impact of emissions into the atmosphere and river systems or the sea. And our eco-footprint method is used by all of our manufacturing sites to measure ten key parameters on a quarterly basis: electricity, waste, fluorides, eutrophication, atmospheric acidification water, chemicals, material intensity, global warming and Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs).
To help achieve our goal to reach carbon neutrality, we closely follow our performance in three key areas: energy efficiency, reduction of CO2 emissions from Perfluorinated Compounds (PFCs); and, carbon sequestration.
We report externally on numerous environmental indicators in our annual Corporate Responsibility Report, which are verified by a third party. All environmental indicators cover about 80% of the company in terms of headcount, and 100% of our major manufacturing activities.
Changes in scope and method during 2008
In 2008, several changes occurred both in our reporting perimeter and in our calculation methodology having impacts on the consumption, net emissions and on their normalized values (consumption/emissions per production unit). One site is not now included in the environmental data collection because all its manufacturing activities were closed during 2007.
Four manufacturing sites have been impacted by the activity of our Flash Memory division involved in the new company Numonyx, with the transfer of some manufacturing units. Consequently, the emissions related to the transferred activities are not reported anymore.
Since 2008, we have decided to start reporting our waste water emissions without taking into account the estimated abatement due to an external waste water treatment plant. We took this decision in order to be consistent with our position of reporting the emissions controlled by our own facilities. This impacted all the parameters related to net emissions to water and also our 2008 results.
A study was conducted in 2007 on transportation emissions calculation using a standard methodology developed in Europe and financed by the European Environment Agency (EEA). This led to the conclusion that our emissions calculation over estimated the emissions since we were using emission factors related to old technology and higher polluting higher polluting means of transport. In 2008, all our calculations have been made with these new emission factors, therefore leading to lower transportation emissions figures.
