ASUS Publishes First Environmental Profit and Loss Report
ASUS EP&L project
In recent years, the trend of sustainable development has emphasized the need to understand the social and environmental impacts caused by a company when engaging in business activities. To assess the overall cost and value of operations, ASUS launched its first Environmental Profit & Loss project in 2017.
The project aimed to measure both positive (“profit”) and negative (“loss”) environmental impacts of a single product line — consumer notebooks — throughout the company’s operations and supply chain. The project also aimed to provide an overall monetary valuation by assessing the economic value of each loss or profit, thus allowing different impacts to be comparable. As a result, the project provided internal decision-making units with an important reference for future product development and supply chain management strategies.
Key findings
ASUS has learned that water pollution had the most significant environmental impact in the investigated product cycle, followed by greenhouse gas emissions, solid waste and water consumption. These were largely generated in the stage of mining and manufacturing of raw materials, and the stage of major component manufacturing.
Next steps
Effective life cycle costing requires the thorough identification of all costs involved in the life cycle of a product, and the EP&L project has highlighted the importance of considering external factors when choosing suppliers.
Furthermore, the scope of the EP&L project will be expanded to include the monetary valuation of other products, including handheld devices, motherboards, desktop computers and monitors. At the same time, ASUS will continue to calculate annual environmental profit and loss in order to verify the effectiveness of new green strategies in the supply chain. By incorporating this approach into the current procurement process, it will be possible to identify hotspots and address issues throughout the company’s corporate actions and supply chain.