TSMC's Innovation of Recycling Copper Waste Liquid Generates Millions of Dollars as Green Value Every Year
TSMC is committed to becoming a practitioner of circular economy and achieving the goal of zero waste with resource regeneration technology. More than 10 tons of electronic-grade copper anodes have been put back into use for the semiconductor manufacturing process in 2020. In general, the copper liquid waste recycling creates an annual benefit of over NT$100 million (estimated US$3.4 million) from waste reduction.
Since 2016, TSMC has actively developed electroplating recycling systems of copper-containing liquid waste in its fabs and continued to regenerate recycled copper tubes extracted from waste copper sulfate onsite. In 2017, TSMC further cooperated with raw material suppliers to research and develop purification procedures of converting highly purified reclaimed copper tubes into electronic-grade copper anodes. With this achievement, TSMC increased the value of recycled materials. As of 2018, the Company began extending this recycling process to TSMC manufacturing processes and succeeded in establishing a reclamation model for electronic-grade copper materials. The technique not only recovers approximately 16,000 metric tons of copper-containing waste liquid but also produces 170 metric tons of recycled copper pipes every year. TSMC significantly promotes the development of the circular economy industry and achieves incredible milestones with its green innovation.
In the wafer manufacturing processes, we employ the most environmentally friendly way to create maximum values with minimum resources.
TSMC Copper Extraction System
