Bittium´s business operations focus mostly on the design, assembly provided by the manufacturing partners and marketing of products. This represents only a minor part of the environmental impacts over the entire life cycle of the products. Products of the Company have only minor general environmental impacts.
Bittium Corporation renewed its global environmental management system certification according to ISO 14001.2015 standard in June 2016. Company is monitoring globally the environmental requirements for products and derived national regulations to the extent that they are related to the company operations. Bittium has also observed and applied the requirements of the ROHS (use of hazardous substances) and WEEE (recycling of electrical and electronic equipment) directives in design since 2002.
The applied environmental standards and regulations in company operations have been consolidated as uniform Bittium substance list, applicable also to Bittium´s significant suppliers. The biannually updated substance list includes, in addition to the compliance of ROHS (I, III and III) and REACH directives, the substance requirements applicable in different market areas against which identification of materials is made if needed. Further, materials declaration list observes certain customer specific requirements. Company has further updated the requirements mainly on a biannual basis and applied the proper environmental requirements to the products or solutions, in which Bittium has partial or total responsibility depending on the application scope. The imposed requirements will be observed in business operations on a country-specific basis.
During 2019 Bittium´s energy efficiency system was updated to cover also international ISO 50001.2018 energy efficiency standard requirements. In addition, environmental management system ISO 9001.2015 was recertified to extend the certification validity until June 2022. Energy efficiency system certification is going to be updated according to ISO 50001.2018 standard during 2020. Bittium has also official energy efficiency review responsible person in its service authorized by Finnish Energy Office.
Bittium has further developed company environmental reporting, based on which the 2019 environmental objectives have been followed. Company has observed the sustainability reporting requirements and published the environmental information as part of its sustainability report. The energy efficiency of Bittium´s Oulu facilities has been clearly improved due to new site opened in October 2017. As an example of the energy efficiency actions the energy powered by solar cells was reaching over ten percent of the whole energy consumption at its best during 2019. In the other Bittium facilities no major impacts to energy efficiency were observed during the reporting period. The waste recycling ratio was reaching high level of 99.8% in Bittium´s Finnish offices during 2019.