Applied Materials Celebrates Earth Day

Applied Materials employees around the world are marking the 40th anniversary of Earth Day with an impressive selection of environmental projects to improve our planet. At Applied, Global citizenship isn’t just viewed as a one-time a year event and so during the month of April we celebrate the environment and our community with our “Earthworks” program. 

Earthworks is a collection of environmental activities lead by our Green Team, Environmental Health and Safety, Community Affairs, and corporate philanthropy and I’m proud to say they are really making a difference in the communities Applied has a presence in.  

Bruce Klafter, in his April 12th blog on Earthworks highlight the programs four goals:

• Raise awareness among employees and partners of what Applied is doing in the environmental arena;
• Take advantage of the heightened level of activity around this event and forge new partnerships in the community or strengthen existing ones;
• Conduct environmentally-focused activities in as many worldwide locations as possible;
• Make a meaningful a contribution to environmental protection.

I thought you might like to see how successful our efforts have been to date. So far, Earthworks activities around the globe have included:

• The internal employee Green Quotient quiz, which has spurred 1,500 employees to test their "GQ"and participate in online quizzes on energy, water and resource conservation, raising more than $10,000 for three environmental organizations.
• In China, Applied employees are focused on energy saving and environment conservation activities including a “Solar PV Knowledge Billboard,” "Tree Planting,” and a "no-car day" activity.
• In India, Applied’s Executive Vice President and General Manager, Silicon Systems Group Randhir Thankur participated in the inauguration of LED street lighting at the IIT Bombay campus, and more than 50 employees in Bangalore planted trees with NGO Trees For Free.
• Employees in Singapore are striving to offset our carbon footprint for at least 1 year of paper usage through a tree planting activity.
• In Israel, Applied's Greennet program conference was attended by 250 school children and their teachers
• Applied Materials Taiwan will hold an Earth Day competition titled "Green Energy Garden" for national elementary schools in June.
• In Japan, a Mt. Fuji cleanup project is an annual tradition. This year, approximately 30 employees their families participated in the event, removing 500 kg (approx 1100 lb) of debris.
• In the U.S. there’s been a wide range of projects: from community garden planting in Kalispell, Montana to Santa Clara, California where 106 employees participated in projects ranging from volunteering at a community farm, school beautification, or solar panel installation project for low income houses, to Austin, Texas where more than 60 employees were engaged in recycling, solar installations, and clean-up projects.

In total, this represents an impressive investment of employees' time and talent combined with our charitable resources to improve our planet and improve the way people live.