Sustainable operations

At ASM, powered by our Growth through Innovation strategy, we aim to improve people’s lives worldwide in meaningful and enduring ways. We start by focusing on our own operations and environmental footprint. And we aim to collaborate across industries, with the ambition to bring faster and more meaningful change to the environmental challenges facing the world today.

Our 2023 results

100% Engineering- and production sites ISO 14001 certified

82% Landfill diversion

500 tonnes Waste avoided through crate reuse

Environmental Management System

We are certified globally to the ISO 14001 environmental management system (EMS), including all our primary engineering and manufacturing locations.

This EMS ensures that we are consistent in our operations and provides a foundation for best practices to be shared and learned across our sites. Read on to discover our practices and policies across different aspects of our sustainable operations.

Water management

Water is essential for all forms of life, communities, and businesses. That’s why for us at ASM, it is crucially important to manage our water usage responsibly. Our water policy seeks to define how we engage in water security. This includes:

Defining and understanding our dependencies
Setting our water stewardship principles

Sharing how we collaborate and engage on water security issues
Aligning to recognized global standards
Setting targets to measure our progress

ASM focuses on proactive water conservation and implementing a best-practice approach. As a standard practice, the wastewater treatment systems at our engineering sites all have water reuse or recirculation capabilities, which helps to minimize consumption. We do not use ultra-pure water for any of our process equipment at ASM.

Circularity and resource management

ASM is committed to promoting a more circular economy. In this sustainable production model, we see long-term opportunities for ASM in operations, product design, logistics and packaging, and building design.

For example, we are focusing on responsible resource consumption. This is a direct way to reduce materials usage and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Ultimately, our ambition is to eliminate all waste through avoidance, reuse, or recycling. Where we encounter challenges – such as limited regional capabilities for recycling or reclaiming or the mandatory mixing of waste streams for regional sorting – we apply our passion for innovation and collaboration to help develop a better approach.

We track and account for all waste at our production and engineering sites. If materials are recycled, reclaimed, or reused, this is measured as avoiding landfill disposal. The landfill diversion rate for ASM sites for 2023 was 86%. With regards to hazardous waste, ASM focuses on minimizing and responsibly managing it across its operations, including having a zero hazardous waste to landfill goal with a primary focus of avoiding generation. In 2023, our global operations generated 7 metric tons of hazardous waste, with no hazardous waste sent to landfill.

Reducing packaging waste

Packaging materials can be a major source of waste, especially for large and sensitive products such as ours. At ASM, we are always looking for opportunities to reduce our consumption of resources by reusing packaging materials. This applies to our own sites, but also across the value chain.

We have engineered reusable crates for our products and collaborate with third parties around the world that can disassemble the crates. The materials are then compacted and returned to our production facilities for inspection, refurbishment if necessary, and ultimately for reuse. Using a similar approach, we also facilitate the transport of certain parts and materials from some of our suppliers and contract manufacturers back to ASM for reuse.

According to a comprehensive Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) that spans across our entire product portfolio, our reusable crates significantly outperform single-use crates in all analyzed indicators, including human health, ecosystems, resources, global warming, cumulative energy demand, and water scarcity. Key results include

A 68% reduction in CO₂ emissions with the use of reusable crates
Reusable crates save 55% in material resources compared to single-use crates
A decrease in water usage by 94%

Our goal is to continue reducing our environmental impact and move towards our target of becoming a Net Zero company by 2035. The full LCA results are available on request.

It is our ambition to improve and expand these reuse initiatives, and we are working closely with suppliers and customers to promote these sustainable processes. In 2023, ASM’s value-chain reuse of packaging materials resulted in 500 tons less landfill disposal.

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