Corporate Responsibility
ENVIRONMENT

Volatile organic material: Performance and goals

In 2008, we emitted 44 metric tonnes of volatile organic material (VOM) compared with 51 metric tonnes in 2005.

The majority of VOM emissions result from our manufacturing lines where we use solvent-based fluids to clean the stencils used in our screen printing operations and when soldering electronic components onto circuit boards. We have significantly reduced our VOM emissions over the years by changing our processes and introducing substitutes.

Our Taiwan site emits almost two thirds of our VOM emissions. In 2007, we replaced solvent-based cleaning fluids, reducing emissions by 15 tonnes per year. We are now working on removing another 23 tonnes by changing our soldering process.

In 2008, our site in Tianjin, China introduced water-based flux in the soldering process, reducing VOM emissions by over 1 tonne.

VOM figures are based on actual reported data as we capture the vast majority of these emissions through our data collection systems.