A Study of the Environmental Performance on Hazardous Waste Management of the Semiconductor and Electronics Industries in Selected Industrial Estates in Luzon, Philippines

In the Philippines, the semiconductor and electronic industry contributes about 70% of export earnings. More than half of the companies inside industrial estates in the country are semiconductor and electronic firms. These firms are among the major contributors of hazardous wastes released through different media, notably solid and semi-solid wastes. The environmental performance indicator, amount of hazardous waste generated per employee, was selected in this study since it is the main environmental problem of SEF and it can be a surrogate of environmental performance when the volume generated has been reduced by way of treatment, disposal or waste minimization efforts. A model equation was derived which identifies the 10 significant variables in terms of affecting the hazardous waste generation. Out of the 10, only four were found to be significant to reduce or increase amount of hazardous waste generated. These are a) ISO accreditation , b) price of treatment and disposal, c) location of firm, whether inside an industrial estate or not, and, d) number/frequency of inspection by regulatory agency. From the regression results, it was shown that there would be less hazardous waste generation if the firm were more automated with less number of employees. Proper handling and transporting of raw materials and products to minimize waste, increasing quality control to minimize rejects, and recycling could also reduce waste generation. Price has also an effect in that increasing the cost charged by ESPs could result to a substantial reduction in hazardous waste generation, which was found to be price elastic. The location of the SEF was also found to be a significant variable since SEF located inside an industrial estate appear to produce more hazardous waste perhaps because the SEFs inside the IEs are more transparent in reporting compared to their counterparts outside IEs. More frequent inspection was also shown to positively affect the environmental performance by reducing hazardous waste generation. Thus, as in other types of industry, inspection is a powerful tool in improving environmental performance within the semiconductor and electronic industry.