Environmental Protection & Occupational Safety
Biodiversity
USI values the provisioning, regulating, supporting, and cultural services ecosystems provide for our business operations and strives to reduce our impact on the ecosystem. Mainland China, Nantou, and Mexico facilities are in high-tech industrial parks, not biodiversity-sensitive areas.
Biodiversity Commitment
To achieve a balanced coexistence and maintain the integrity of natural ecosystems and forest conservation, USI established our Biodiversity and No Deforestation Commitment and publicly disclosed our biodiversity targets:
- Target Objective: to work towards No Net Loss (NNL) and No Gross Deforestation across our operations and value chain, we establish a global monitoring system to track biodiversity loss and comply with statutory biodiversity and forest conservation regulations, reducing environmental impacts and dependencies in the best practicable way.
- Risk Assessment: USI engages with internal and external stakeholders to assess potential biodiversity and deforestation risks following international guidelines. We analyze dependencies and impacts, consider local operational and ecological characteristics, identify priority areas to work on, and manage material risks by developing action plans with clear and measurable metrics.
- Mitigating Impact: to balance our impact on the ecosystem, USI adopts a nature-based mitigation hierarchy approach of prevention, mitigation, restoration, and offsetting throughout the operation life cycle to investigate and monitor material risks, protect biodiversity and ecosystem services, and prevent deforestation or invasive species.
- Scope of Coverage: all operations, suppliers, and partners are subject to the Commitment. New Facilities and value chain operational activities are prohibited, where avoidable, to be located near sites containing globally or nationally important biodiversity, environmentally-sensitive hotspots, ecological corridors, in areas contiguous with hydrological and vegetation conditions, or the vicinity of the sites mentioned above.
With the Board of Directors’ endorsement and approval, this Commitment is implemented across all operating sites, subsidiaries, suppliers, and business partners inside and outside the value chain worldwide to achieve the long-term goal of 2050 Net Positive Impact (NPI).
As part of our restoration efforts, USI began afforestation in partnership with an organization in 2013 to increase biodiversity and soil and water conservation. In addition, to reduce the Potentially Disappeared Fraction of species and achieve No Gross Deforestation by 2050, USI continues the hierarchical mitigation approach of prevention, mitigation, restoration, and offsetting in our facilities and carry out measures such as energy saving, carbon reduction, and resource recovery to ameliorate our impact.
Biodiversity Risk Assessment
We use the LEAP process proposed by the TNFD framework to understand the interaction between the Nantou Facility and the suppliers' operations in Taiwan and the natural ecology, to assess the dependency and impact on nature and biodiversity, and to capture the related risks and opportunities.
Biodiversity Risk Assessment Process:
According to the specific protection zone delineated by local regulations, the biodiversity map overlap analysis was conducted in 2 km radius buffer area between the Nantou Facility and the supplier's operation sites in Taiwan. The analysis of supplier locations in Nantou and Taiwan has been completed, and some suppliers are known to have overlapping locations with the legal areas.
Operation & Supplier Location Analysis:
Buffer Analysis of Supplier Locations:
Through the Materiality Survey of Nature and Biodiversity Questionnaire, we have specified the natural resources required for operations or the services provided by ecosystems as dependency indicators, and the impact of operations on ecosystems as impact indicators. Based on the survey results, consider the degree of concern and influence, and identify the concerns and risks of dependence and impact. From the identification results, it is found that the company has a high risk of relying on climate regulation and water supply. We have proposed countermeasures for the risks. Please refer to the Climate Change and Carbon Management.
Issues of Concern and Risk Levels of Dependence and Impact:
Relevance | Objective | Issues of Concern | Level of Risk |
Dependency | Operations | Water Shortage | Medium |
Uneven Rainfall | Medium | ||
High Temperature | Low | ||
Degraded Air Quality | Extremely Low | ||
Supplier | High Temperature | Low | |
Non-Organic Materials Shortage (metals) | Medium | ||
Impact | Operations | Process Wastewater (containing chemicals and heavy metals) | Extremely Low |
Greenhouse Gases | Extremely Low | ||
Supplier
|
Waste | Low | |
Greenhouse Gases | Low | ||
Minerals (e.g., metals, non-metals) | Low | ||
Fossil Fuel & Energy (e.g., steam, electricity, heat) | Low |
For customers, the following issues are known to be of higher concern. USI will consider the concerns of customers and further review the areas that need to be strengthened in our operations.
Customer Concerns: