In response to the increasingly severe challenges of global warming and resource scarcity, MiTAC considers environmental friendliness in our product design to reduce the impact on the environment. In compliance with international environmental regulations and customer requirements, the company incorporates energy saving, material reduction, product disassembly, and simplified waste recycling into its research and design process. For the control of hazardous chemicals, MiTAC sets short and medium-term goals for the reduction of harmful substances. To minimize the environmental impact of the manufacturing process, an environmental management system has been established, clearly defining various environmental management procedures to control waste and resource usage during manufacturing effectively.

Under the existing foundational system, MiTAC continues to promote the concept of a circular economy, gradually fulfilling the environmental commitments as part of our social responsibility.

Life Cycle Assessment

While Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) typically evaluates products from cradle to grave, MiTAC takes a cradle-to-cradle approach to green product design. This means considering the entire life cycle of the product, from production to disposal, with a focus on circular design principles. We aim to design products that not only have environmental benefits but also drive business innovation. Materials used in our products are selected with the goal of maintaining their quality throughout the life cycle through recycling and reuse processes at the end of their life. This approach minimizes the negative environmental impact of waste disposal and maximizes resource efficiency.

Our company complies with applicable national and international laws, as well as ethical codes, concerning our operational areas. This includes promoting fair competition, ensuring the safety of products and services for customers, adhering to labor laws and practices, upholding the Declaration of Human Rights, meeting international standards, and protecting copyrights, company assets, and all forms of intellectual property rights, in accordance with regulatory requirements. To ensure the health and safety of users, all ITE products undergo electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) or electromagnetic interference (EMI) testing and comply with mandatory regulations in all sales regions. In 2024, our company did not face any penalties related to legal violations.

MiTAC is committed to achieving the green pledge through adhering to international environmental regulations, Design for Environment of products, and obtaining environmental certifications. The key initiatives are outlined as follows:

Adhering to International Environmental Regulations: We use trends in international environmental regulations as a basis for environmentally friendly product design, moving from controlling hazardous substances to comprehensive lifecycle management of products. For example, the EU ErP directive sets requirements for eco-design to reduce resource consumption and pollutant emissions for all energy-using products. Design for Environment of products: MiTAC considers Design for Environment (DfE), or Eco-design, as a fundamental product design principle. Our developers must comprehensively evaluate the environmental impact at every stage—from design, production, packaging, transportation, and consumer use, to recycling and disposal. Environmental Certifications: In coordination with customer sales, we design products to meet the highest environmental product standards required by different countries. This includes standards such as the U.S. EPEAT and ENERGY STAR, China's SEPA, CECP, and CEL, Taiwan's Green Mark, the EU Flower, and Germany's Blue Angel. At the development stage, our products are designed to meet requirements for design, usage, recycling, energy consumption, and low toxicity to satisfy various nations' green procurement thresholds.

Our company is committed to reducing the over-exploitation of resources, improving resource use efficiency, and decreasing the consumption of high energy-intensive resources. Regarding the raw materials for core products in production, their usage is directly related not only to operational efficiency but also to environmental resource consumption. We regularly track and analyze raw material usage to improve material use efficiency annually and reduce the materials needed for packaging and shipping. All products comply with the RoHS Recast Directive (2011/65/EU) and the RoHS Commission Delegated Directive (2015/863/EU). According to the design requirements of the WEEE Recast Directive (2012/19/EU), the raw materials used in our products have a recyclability rate of over 80%.

Packaging Materials

Packaging materials can be categorized into sales packaging, unit packaging, and transport packaging, and we select green packaging materials that meet environmental standards for all. Our main approaches include reducing overall packaging material usage, adopting reusable packaging designs, and using recycled materials to mitigate the impact of packaging on the environment.

• Reducing overall packaging material usage: We improve product packaging design and select appropriate packaging sizes to ensure safe transportation while avoiding unnecessary or excessive waste.
• Adopting reusable packaging designs: We use packaging materials that can directly enter recycling systems or reusable filling materials to achieve packaging material recyclability.
• Selecting recycled materials: We choose packaging materials made from biodegradable materials and recycled resources, such as paper partitions and plant fiber non-woven bags, and use PVC-free packaging materials to reduce over-reliance on existing resources.

  The reusable packaging ratio was 65% in 2022, 70% in 2023, and has increased to 80% in 2024.

Cases of Product DfE

Product Type: Data Center Enterprise Servers and Storage Servers

• Modular Structural Design: Implementing a modular approach enables easier upgrades and repairs, thereby reducing waste.
• Convenience for Recyclers: From the initial design stage, we consider the ease of disassembly and recycling at the end of the product's life.
• Focus on Key Raw Materials: Paying attention to critical materials in the product composition ensures responsible sourcing and potential for reuse.

To meet the three main objectives outlined, we primarily employ four specific approaches:

• Ease of Disassembly for Key Components: This facilitates future maintenance, repair, product upgrades, reuse of components, and material sorting for recycling at the end of the product's life.
• Provision of Weight Information for Internationally Concerned Key Raw Materials in Parts: Currently, this includes cobalt in batteries and neodymium (Nd) in the read/write head assemblies of hard disk drives (HDDs).
• Continuous Software Update Services for Customers: We offer ongoing software updates, ensuring customers can use the products over the long term without the risk of obsolescence due to discontinued software maintenance. This also benefits the secondary market, where refurbished products can continue to be used with up-to-date system software, thereby extending the product's lifespan.
• Provision of Data Deletion Software for Customers: This functionality allows customers to securely erase data when disposing of or transferring equipment, alleviating information security concerns and thus enhancing the willingness to transfer products and increasing opportunities for product reuse.

In our main finished products, we adhere to the EU Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directive. We consider future disassembly and recyclability at the stage of design, with the weight of recyclable materials reaching over 85%. In 2024, we completed 3R reports for three products. Based on economic principles, the total weight of materials used in MiTAC's products in 2024 was 2,499 metric tons, with 2,277 metric tons of recyclable materials and 222 metric tons of non-recyclable materials. MiTAC calculated the total weight of input materials based on 83.76% of procurement spending, using economic principles, and determined the respective weights of recyclable and non-recyclable materials based on the proportion of representative products.

Use of Recycled Materials

Sticking to the EU Directive on the Waste Electronics and Electrical Equipment (WEEE), the Company takes into account the feasibility and convenience of future collection, disassembly and recycling for reuse of products right at the stage of design.

The percentage of post-consumer recycled (PCR) plastic used in >25g plastic components in the server product series is as follows:

The above assessment of PCR plastic content in >25g plastic components is based on a holistic assessment, considering the configuration with the lowest percentage of PCR plastic in the overall calculation. Currently, shipments to brand customers do not include the percentage of PCR plastic derived from brand customer components. However, this will be gradually increased based on certification requirements in the future.

The six products mentioned above, which incorporated recycled materials, used a total of 2.95 tons of recycled materials, representing 0.12% of the total material used.

Additionally, in response to the EPEAT revision, we adopted recycled steel in 2024. For structural steel components in products, we selected recycled steel with a certain percentage of recycled content. This allows us to meet the new EPEAT standard when calculating the overall recycled steel content percentage in our products. In 2024, the percentage of recycled steel was not statistically tracked; therefore, the aforementioned percentage of recycled materials only includes recycled plastics.

Product Energy-saving Design  

From the product design stage, we require suppliers to provide raw materials and semi-finished products that must comply with specific environmental protection and safety standards, as well as industry regulations, in order to achieve environmental protection and energy saving. All products meet the European Union's RoHS recast environmental directive and the EU ErP energy efficiency standards. System products (servers) can meet the international ENERGY STAR certification requirements as per customer certification needs. They use power supplies with high energy efficiency and high power factor that comply with the international 80 PLUS standards to achieve energy savings. We have been improving the energy efficiency levels of power supplies annually. While the industry standard was generally at the 80 PLUS Gold level, in 2019 we upgraded all our products to the 80 PLUS Platinum level, and further enhanced to the even higher energy efficiency level of 80 PLUS Titanium in 2023. By the end of 2025, the China Energy Label (CEL) certification for servers will be mandatory, and server products exported to China will conduct energy efficiency level certification according to its regulations.