December 23, 2024

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Samsung SDI's six manufacturing plants at home, including Ulsan, earned the highest Platinum rating in this year's UL Solution's Zero Waste to Landfill certification. (Samsung SDI)

South Korea’s leading battery maker Samsung SDI said Wednesday it has achieved the highest certification of "Platinum" from UL Solutions’ Zero Waste to Landfill program for all six facilities at home.

UL Solutions, a global leader in applied safety science, tested the company’s landfill diversion levels according to its ZWTL program, classifying them into 100 percent "Platinum," 99 to 95 percent "Gold," and 94 to 90 percent "Silver" ratings.

While its Giheung and Cheongju plants earned Platinum ratings for two consecutive years, the other four sites in Cheonan, Ulsan, Gumi and Suwon were also recognized for their 100 percent recycling efforts in this year’s evaluation.

Since 2019, Samsung SDI has been working closely with recycling partners to build a closed-loop system that extracts key materials including cobalt, nickel and lithium from battery scraps without losing original properties and reuses them for new products.

In May 2022, the company also opened the Recycle Research Lab, ramping up efforts in recovering battery waste and recyclable materials.

Even outside the country, its manufacturing plant in Wuxi, China has obtained the Platinum rating, while those in Hungary and the Chinese city of Tianjin are validated as Gold.

Following the evaluation on its Malaysia and Vietnam sites this year, all Samsung SDI facilities will be certified with the ZWTL program, the company said.

The battery maker’s ultimate goal is to achieve the highest level certification in all of its overseas operations by 2024.

“Achieving zero waste to landfill certification is a step forward to being a global top-tier company,” said Samsung SDI CEO Choi Yoon-ho. “We will continue to make the world greener with a resource circulation strategy.”

By Mun So-jeong (munsojeong@heraldcorp.com)