Company: ALGN
Filing Date: 2025-04-08
Form Type: DEF 14A
Source: 0001097149-25-000021
Chunk: 27

Company: ALIGN TECHNOLOGY INC
Filing Date: 2025-04-08
Form: DEF 14A
Chunk 27
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 certification.

• Water Conservation. Through Best Management Practices, we reduced costs and water consumption through initiatives that have recycled over 21 million gallons of water since January 2023.

• Waste Reduction and Recycling. Building on 2023, we continued to add comprehensive recycling programs to address the entire waste profile ranging from everyday operations to manufacturing and product use by our customers and patients.

◦ The majority of plastic we use is diverted from landfills through energy recovery programs or via recycling.

◦ We responded to customer and patient feedback for recycling initiatives by launching recycling model programs in Brazil and piloting new models in the United States and Australia, providing customers with options for recycling used aligners they have requested.

#### •

#### Other Initiatives
◦ We began limited direct fabrication of certain products. In the future, we expect direct fabrication will significantly reduce the amount of resin used in the manufacturing process as we scale the production process and thereby reduce our per unit materials costs.

◦ Since 2016, product design and manufacturing innovations to traditional manufacturing processes have reduced our materials costs by reducing the polymer content used in our aligner fabrication process by approximately 50% and the amount of resin in aligner molding by approximately 33%.

◦ Expanding the use of our intraoral iTero scanners to overall reduce the need for traditional polyvinyl-siloxane dental impressions, mining of the materials used to make those impressions and the costs and environmental impacts of shipping those impressions.

◦ Redesigning our packaging materials to decrease costs related shipping as well as compliance with packaging regulations and the ecological impact of product packaging.

• Responsible Procurement Practices. Our suppliers are essential to all aspects of our business, and our supplier relationships are based on trust and shared commitments to ethical and legal conduct. We select key suppliers that have implemented sustainable business practices to serve our core business processes.

◦ We expect our supply partners to follow the highest standards in the industry, such as ISO 14001, and we require our suppliers to adhere to responsible sourcing. We prohibit our suppliers from profiting from the sale of tantalum, tin, tungsten, and gold (“conflict minerals”) that funds conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and adjoining countries and require them to source such minerals from socially responsible suppliers.

◦ Our suppliers are asked to comply with our Code through which we expect them to respect human rights and treat others fairly, including complying with labor and employment laws, namely minimum wages, overtime, forced and child labors, not unlawfully confiscating immigration documents