SEOUL, Korea (Aug. 13, 2021) – LG Display, the world’s leading innovator of display technologies, highlights its ESG management by outlining the company’s ESG activities and achievements in pursuit of a greener planet in its Sustainability Report for 2021.
To promote sustainability management and reach its goal of becoming the most sustainable display solution company in the world, LG Display has identified and implemented four key strategies: Internalization of CSR, CSR risk management, communication with stakeholders, and global engagement – all key pillars to the company’s core mission of being a sustainability company founded on stakeholder trust.
The company has also promoted eco-friendly management throughout the display industry with active investments and activities designed to heighten the supply chain’s eco-friendliness. And after setting its new “Safety, Health, Energy and Environment Policy,” the company was able to adopt an integrated standard system that minimizes its products’ environmental impact from the design, production, distribution and logistics processes, to when they are being used and recycled during disposal.
LG Display is just as dedicated to implementing practices directly affecting the everyday consumer, with the company now exclusively developing and manufacturing products that emit far less volatile organic compounds (VOCs) than conventional displays. LG Display has made every effort to eliminate VOCs from the supply and manufacturing processes involved in making its panels, including developing and manufacturing OLED TV products that emit 50 percent less VOCs than LCD TV panels by using fewer plastic parts. LG Display’s OLED additionally boasts a 92.7 percent recycling rate, one that is higher than its LCD counterpart. In recognition of such efforts, the company received Eco-Product certification in 2020 from Swiss-based SGS, the world’s leading testing, inspection and certification company.
In addition, LG Display is focused on the development and expansion of its eco-friendly products. To that end, the company created ‘Eco Index,’ which measures a company’s green performance from the product development stage to help them enhance their use of resources, energy, and hazardous substances. The company also recently began significantly reducing its packaging by recycling packaging materials for OLED panels.
LG Display revealed its strategy in response to the rapidly growing threat of climate change. The company has invested over KRW 37 billion to replace sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) with unregulated greenhouse gases boasting low global warming potential values, while also establishing facilities that help the company reduce more than 90 percent of its greenhouse gas emissions. As a result, LG Display successfully reduced approximately 3 million tons of CO2-eq, a 39 percent decrease from 2014.
By 2050, the company aims to have decreased company-wide greenhouse gas emissions by 75.6 percent compared to 2014 and achieved a 100 percent waste recycle rate, both through the development of low-carbon clean production technologies.
Moreover, LG Display takes part in the CDP (Carbon Disclosure Project), which is recognized as a world-renowned authority in the field of environmental information disclosure. The company has been rewarded for its Green House Gas reduction efforts by being incorporated into the Carbon Management Honors Club for the fourth consecutive year since 2017. LG Display also maintained its status as an excellent company for 3 straight years since 2018 for its excellence in environmental impact management.
Most notably, this year the company joined the influential Responsible Business Alliance (RBA) which encourages close cooperation between its members, supply chains, and stakeholders to enhance working and environmental conditions and improve business performance based on a proven Code of Conduct. Moreover, investment research firm MSCI (formerly known as Morgan Stanley Capital International) upgraded its ESG ratings for LG Display from A to AA earlier this year, evaluating LG Display most favorably in the areas of chemical safety, controversial outsourcing, and opportunities in clean tech. This puts LG Display among the highest-rated companies in South Korea and display manufacturers worldwide.
As the world’s leading display company, LG Display is focused on constantly innovating and improving the value and quality of its products. In 2020, the company expanded its R&D investment and implemented 20 company-wide initiatives through Tear Down Redesign – an organization that puts experts from various fields together on time-based projects for solving specific problems. In addition, LG Display outlined the work it is undertaking to create innovative, differentiated values and opportunities in the display market based on its strengths and competitiveness.
“We will continue to elevate our contribution to society and meet the expectations from the stakeholders, not only on the business results, but also in all areas of ESG, including environment, social responsibility and governance,” said James Hoyoung Jeong, CEO of LG Display. “As a pioneer of the OLED display industry, LG Display will further strengthen its business portfolio centered around OLED and grow to become a company that can offer even unexpected values to our customers.”
This year’s LG Display Sustainability Report was published in a total of four languages – Korean, Chinese, English and Vietnamese.
