Assessing integrated circuit manufacturing for environmental performance and sustainability: a full scale IC business application

Integrated circuit manufacturing is a high value-added industry but also one that generally is viewed as very intensive with respect to energy, water, and chemical use. It is important to understand the types of environmental impact created by this industry as they relate to the economic value it provides and the emerging concept of sustainability. The sustainability target method (STM) uniquely links the economic value of a business with its environmental impact to provide a practical business criterion for sustainability. The Agere Systems IC Business Group is a major IC business with internationally located facilities involved in state-of-the-art crystal growing, wafer fabrication, and IC encapsulation/packaging activities. Agere has applied the STM to evaluate its operations. This includes identifying, quantifying, and characterizing data for environmental aspects of numerous facilities, allocating aspects and accounting for split product streams, and organizing and interpreting results in terms of both environmental aspects and impacts and corporate financial performance. The results demonstrate business-wide application of the STM and provide Agere with the basis for evaluating and tracking performance and setting goals for the future from the perspective of sustainability.