SEOUL, Korea – September 20, 2023 – SAMSUNG SDI today announced that the company earned the highest level of certification from UL Solutions Zero Waste to Landfill (ZWTL) program, as a testament to its strengthened environment-friendly management. 

Awarded by UL Solutions, a global safety science certifier, ZWTL designations are classified into Platinum (100%), Gold (99-95%), and Silver (94-90%) ratings according to the rate of landfill diversion a facility achieves. It is widely used as an international standard for evaluating a company's efforts for resource circularity. 

At its Korean operations, SAMSUNG SDI is successfully diverting from landfill or incineration 100% of its general waste as well as the designated waste generated in manufacturing which is then either separated and recycled or used as energy. 

The company’s Giheung and Cheongju sites earned Platinum for two years in a row, while those in Cheonan, Ulsan, Gumi and Suwon received the highest certification this year. 

Since 2019, the SAMSUNG battery maker has been working closely with its recycling partners in Korea to extract cobalt, nickel and lithium from scrap at its plants and recycle such recovered key materials for battery manufacturing under a closed-loop system. In May 2022, the company opened the Recycle Research Lab under the R&D Center to research and develop ways to improve rate of recovering battery materials and reclaiming eco-friendly materials. 

Taking the momentum, SAMSUNG SDI plans to have its overseas worksites also validated by UL Solutions Zero Waste to Landfill program. A Platinum designation was already granted to the company's operation in Wuxi, China whereas those in Hungary and Tianjin, China received a Gold rating. Once the remaining global worksites in Malaysia, Vietnam, etc. get successfully certified, SAMSUNG SDI will have earned Zero Waste to Landfill certifications in all of its operations at home and abroad by the end of this year. The company set forth an ambitious goal of raising its landfill waste diversion rate even higher in Gold-rated facilities, to have the ZWLP Platinum designation awarded to its business sites across the board by 2024. 

Having been certified as such at an extensive scale reaffirms SAMSUNG SDI's pledge for environment-friendly management declared in October last year. The declaration outlined two major themes - response to climate change and resource circularity - and eight pursuant specific tasks which have since been vigorously implemented. The Zero Waste to Landfill validations effectively underpin the company's efforts to maximize resource circularity. 

"Achieving the ZWTL designations is an integral part of our environment-friendly management that will set us to be a global Top Tier company by 2030," said SAMSUNG SDI President and CEO Yoon-ho Choi. "We will continually endeavor to make the world greener and sustainable, including efforts for resource circularity."