Recycling Performance

Samsung Electronics promotes that all its products are collected and recycled at the end of their lifecycle, so that it can contribute to reserving clean environment by reusing resources. The company has established recycling infrastructure in Korea. It also finances for the collection and recycling of its products in many other countries. Samsung Electronics continuously work to increase the amount of recyclable products. Below are the amounts that Samsung Electronics recycled across all its product groups in Korea and Japan from 2004, in Europe from 2005, and in the United States from 2006.

Samsung WEEE recycled amount by region

Recycling Rate

Below are the recycling rates in 2007 for TVs, PCs, and mobile phones based on the average life-span of the product. For example, taking the average life-span of a TV as 10 years, the recycling rate for 2007 is the weight of TVs recycled in 2007 as a percentage of the weight of TVs sold in 1997.

Recycling rates for 2007:

• TVs - 137 % (based on an average life-span of 10 years)
• Computers - 12 % (based on an average life-span of 7 years)
• Mobile phones - 9% (based on an average life-span of 2 years)

Use of Recycled Plastic

When designing and manufacturing new products, Samsung Electronics aims to use recycled plastics wherever possible to reduce the demand for virgin materials and minimize industrial waste. Our current use of recycled plastics across all products is approximately:

• Post-industrial plastic: 15.9%
• Post-consumer plastic: 0.2%

Samsung Electronics is planning to increase the use of recycled plastics and has set an aspirational target of 25% recycled plastic content out of total plastics used by 2025. However, there are some remaining key challenges to be overcome in reaching this target. Sourcing sufficient volumes and the continuity of that supply are vital to enable long-term production planning based on the use of recycled plastics. In addition, it is important to ensure that post-consumer recycled plastics are of sufficient quality and do not contain target substances, such as brominated flame retardants (BFRs), which Samsung Electronics is committed to removing from our products.

Nevertheless, setting this aspirational target indicates Samsung Electronics' commitment to finding solutions to these challenges and developing new products with higher levels of recycled plastic content. Samsung Electronics will commit to maximize the use of post-consumer recycled plastics over the use of post-industrial plastics in all products.