Sustainability Report 2021 72 Sustainability Report 2021 72 Promoting the Circular Economy Applied Materials works to promote the circular economy vision by eliminating waste through design, creating efficiencies across the product lifecycle, and employing materials that can be reused or recycled at the end of a product’s functional life. Remanufacturing Semiconductor Systems and Parts Our systems are designed to last, to support upgrades and repurposing for new applications, and to be easily repairable if parts fail or performance falls below acceptable standards. All newly manufactured parts are engineered for greater repairability, and we use refurbished parts whenever possible for repair and remanufacture, contributing to sustainability and cost-effectiveness. Expanding repairability: By reviewing all parts for the potential to repair, we’ve grown the percentage of repaired parts we use to service tools under contract from 65% to more than 70% over the past three years. In a cross-functional effort, new parts are identified for potential repairability during new product introductions, and our service engineering group identifies used parts that can be confirmed for repair. We continue to look at parts that come into contact with process chemicals for potential repair or cleaning/reuse solutions. Recovery and reuse: Within AGS, a dedicated team specializes in recovering parts and assemblies from the market and reconditioning them for reuse, thereby reducing our manufacturing operation’s need for virgin materials. Each recovered part goes through an exacting process of inspection, decontamination, refurbishment, and repair, and is then recertified by AGS as “like new” for reuse and recirculation, with a full warranty and the same service level as a new part. On average, 40% of the parts used for servicing Applied Materials tools have been refurbished after previous use in an Applied system. We are constantly improving our refurbishment processes to grow that number by encompassing more part categories—for example, electrostatic chucks, whose reuse rate has increased 11% over the past three years. We maintain one of the industry’s largest global inventories of spare parts, with recovered parts searchable in our inventory management system and ready to be pulled for cleaning and reconditioning. “Coming from a technology startup where you’re able to be extremely entrepreneurial in each of your initiatives, I thought I might face more limitations coming into a large, established corporation. Pleasantly, I found the opposite to be true. Applied has a culture of openness to different perspectives and new ways of tackling challenges.” Amy Marketing Communications INTRODUCTION PURPOSE PEOPLE PLANET PROGRESS Design for Sustainability Promoting the Circular Economy Product Safety Supply Chain Responsibility