Corporate social responsibility

Throughout our history, as a company and as individual employees, we have dedicated our time, talents, and resources to organizations and programs that make a positive difference in the lives of others.


Corporate social responsibility

We are committed to improving the lives of our employees, customers, patients, stakeholders, and the communities in which we live and work. Conducting our business ethically, responsibly, and transparently is the right thing to do, allows us and others to hold us accountable, and, in the long run, generates pride and commitment from our employees and creates value for all our stakeholders.

Align is committed to enhancing our Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) disclosures over time. As we move forward, we will continue to align our ESG communications with our corporate objectives and to demonstrate the relationship between our ESG disclosures and our strategy and purpose.

 

Philanthropy

One of the many things that makes Align a great place to work is the concern our employees have for the world around us and our commitment to helping others. As a company and as individual employees, we have dedicated our time, talents, and resources to organizations and programs that make positive differences in the lives of others. Our philanthropic philosophy is to support organizations whose visions tie closely to our own - improving smiles, supporting, and educating teens, and empowering our customers through partnerships with learning institutions and foundations. Globally, we provide opportunities for and actively encourage employees to support local charities through volunteerism, team building, and donation programs. We are extremely proud of our corporate commitment to philanthropic work and are equally proud of the generosity and dedication of our employees. This passion is core to our purpose of transforming smiles and changing lives, and in times of need, how we support our employees, customers, and communities is more important than ever before.  In 2022, we donated $860,000 through our donor advised fund and more than $200,000 in grants made outside of the fund. Since the donor advised fund inception in 2020, we have granted almost $3 million to non-profits and NGOs around the world.

Our partnership with Benevity, a corporate purpose platform, continues to transform our workplace, cultures, and the communities where we live and work. This platform provides employees a central place to find ways to make an impact through volunteer activities, donation opportunities, charitable education, and our first ever employee 2:1 donation match campaign.

Globally, we provide opportunities for and actively encourage employees to support local charities through volunteerism, team building, and donation programs and are extremely proud of our corporate commitment to philanthropic work and are equally proud of the generosity and dedication of our employees.


At an APAC leadership conference, employees spent time building bikes for children

Our employees supporting Ukraine humanitarian aid

Every October, we host Month of Smiles where we encourage all employees to make a positive difference through volunteerism, donations, and intentional acts of goodness.

We held our 5th annual Month of Smiles in October 2022, where we aspire to have each of our more than 23,000 employees make a positive difference through volunteerism, charitable donations, fundraising activities, and intentional acts of goodness. We hosted an employee fundraiser for Operation Smile where we raised almost $25,000 utilizing our Benevity platform. Our “You Choose” program, where employees help choose which organizations to support, provided $35,000 each (totaling $105,000) to Save the Children, Nova Ukraine, and UNICEF.

In addition to our employee month of service, there are a number of organizations and programs we support:

Operation Smile

Since 2013 Align has been a proud supporter of Operation Smile, a global medical nonprofit that has provided hundreds of thousands of free surgeries for people born with cleft lip and cleft palate in low- and middle-income countries. Together, we envision a future where health and dignity are improved by safe surgery – consistent with our mission to transform smiles and change lives. To date, we have donated more than $2.5 million, enabling the organization to deliver the highest quality surgical care to tens of thousands of the world’s most vulnerable patients, and grow its reach to countries around the world. We sponsored Operation Smile’s 2018, 2022, and 2023 International Student Leadership Conferences and in 2021, we donated $1 million to Operation Smile. In recognition of our support, Align received Operation Smile's Corporate Humanitarian Award. “We are so appreciative of the dedication and support from Align Technology over the years and are excited for what we can do to bring families renewed hope and help children around the world smile even more as a result of this latest donation,” said Kristie Magee Porcaro, chief strategy officer, Operation Smile. “Together, we’re improving the health of many children and ensuring that they have the opportunity for a better future.”

Experience the 2023 International Student Leadership Conference here:

America’s ToothFairy

In underserved communities across America, many families don’t know what causes dental disease and how they can prevent tooth decay. America’s ToothFairy improves the lives of children by preventing dental disease through educational programs that encourage effective dental hygiene habits and help families break the cycle of poor oral health. Align supports America’s ToothFairy’s Health Education Resources and Outreach (HERO) Program and 2022 marked the 14th year of Underwriter support helping America’s ToothFairy reach millions of kids. During America’s ToothFairy’s 2023 fiscal year, which ended June 30, 2023, with Align’s help, America’s Toothfairy was able to reach nearly 900,000 children with oral health education and hygiene instruction.


We are proud to support an organization that is helping families in underserved communities learn about oral health and the best ways to maintain a healthy smile,” said Align’s Vice President of Philanthropy, Inclusion, and Wellness and America’s ToothFairy Board Secretary, Julie Paulsen. “We are delighted to sponsor the HERO Program and support the efforts of America’s ToothFairy, whose vision is closely tied to Align’s purpose – to transform smiles and change lives.” You can find more about America’s ToothFairy here .


Cristo Rey San José High School- Align has partnered with Cristo Rey San José High School since 2017 through their corporate work study program and mentoring programs. This provides a diverse workforce of students who receive valuable work skills, confidence, and professional role models.

JA Worldwide- In honor of Align's 25th Anniversary in 2022, the company donated $250,000 to support the important work that JA (Junior Achievement) Worldwide does to prepare young people for work and career readiness while developing critical life skills. As the world’s largest youth-serving NGO, JA Worldwide prepares young people for employment and entrepreneurship through hands on, experiential learning. They create pathways for employability, job creation, and financial success and each year, their network of over 500,000 volunteers and teachers serves more than 10 million students in over 100 countries. We have held several volunteer opportunities with JA including a STEM summit for high school students at our Innovation Center in San Jose, California. Our support of JA globally and in sites such as San Jose culminated in a nomination for induction into Junior Achievement’s Business Hall of Fame.

In 2023, Align was recognized by JA NorCal. "We are proud to share that Align Technology was honored as the Technology Partner of the Year at the 2023 Junior Achievement of Northern California (@janorcal), Business Hall of Fame and Julie Paulsen, vice president, CSR at Align was nominated as a 2023 “Junior Achievement of Northern California Volunteer of the Year.”

Throughout the year, Align hosts mentoring and educational opportunities for students, including a science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) career summit to encourage interest in future careers and support JA’s mission to empower students toward economic success.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CrbptPQAQxq/

Align sponsored Junior Achievement’s STEM career summit for local high school students.


Inclusion and Wellness

“At Align, we provide a vibrant employee experience that encourages inclusion and diversity, supports health and wellness, and inspires and develops personal and professional growth” - Stuart Hockridge, executive vice president, Human Resources

We are fortunate to have a smart, diverse, and agile global team of employees. It’s imperative that we provide a vibrant employee experience and value our employees’ collective voices. As a result, we conduct an employee survey annually. We have a consistently high response rate to our annual surveys and receive consistently high scores in overall engagement and alignment. While we score high, we continue to seek ways to ensure employees can thrive in our business.

Align’s core values of agility, customer, and accountability are more than words to work by, they are words we live by. The actions we take every day speak to who we are as a company and our focus on being truly impactful. We celebrate our differences, and the many ways we support one another— ultimately creating a more inclusive organization and world as we continue transforming smiles and changing lives.

Promoting diversity and encouraging inclusion in the workplace makes Align a more successful, welcoming, and enjoyable place to work. We are committed to building a workforce of diverse cultural backgrounds and life experiences and fostering open-mindedness and compassion for all our employees. Our work culture is designed to create financial, health, career, and personal benefits for our employees and organization. We sponsor diverse and cultural recognition events to increase awareness of inclusion and diversity, including its importance in creating an environment where every employee can thrive. Align’s global events recognize and help increase awareness of our commitment to inclusion and diversity, especially its importance in creating an environment where every employee can thrive. A variety of employee resources and standards embody this commitment to diversity and inclusion, including our Global Code of Conduct, Global Speak Up policy, Employee Resource Groups (ERGs), and Align University education programs covering anti-harassment and discrimination, inclusion, bias, the importance of diversity, cultural awareness, and much more.

Our employee resource groups (ERGs) are based on shared characteristics or life experiences and are open to all employees, including those who do not directly identify with other members but are passionate in supporting the group’s members in creating an educated, supportive, and inclusive culture.

We have incorporated diversity, inclusion and belonging into our policies and practices, education and events, and executive and community programs, including:

Women in Leadership

Our leadership programs and global women@align chapters offer and encourage networking, professional development, leadership mentoring, and educational projects. The intent is to attract, develop, and retain talented women while engaging all employees. As part of our commitment, we have initiated programs and dedicated resources aimed at recruiting, monitoring, and enhancing programs designed to achieve our goals.

Volunteer and Service Leadership

Our goal is to inspire and develop employees through serving others in the communities where they work and live. We encourage our employees to volunteer through organized company activities or on their own with volunteer time off programs for applicable employees.

Awards and recognitions


Align has been honored with numerous awards for our positive work environment and culture.

  • Great Place to Work and Best Places to Work based on our employee-validated great workplaces in the following countries- Brazil, Costa Rica, Germany, India, Italy, Poland, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam – as well as in Raleigh, North Carolina
  • Best Place to Work in IT by Computerworld who surveyed organizations across the United States to identify those that provide the best benefits and amenities for IT professionals.
  • 100 Best Companies to Work for in Israel by CofaceBdi
  • AmCham Cares Distinction Award Recipient in Singapore based on our volunteer and fundraising campaigns.

Month of Wellness


It is our responsibility to support the health and well-being of our employees. Every year, we have a month dedicated to well-being, called Month of Wellness, which is a worldwide movement fostering employee health. Throughout the Month of Wellness, employees participate in a variety of activities such as informational sessions and health fairs and receive useful resources aligned to our wellness pillars - mental resilience, physical well-being and healthy living, social/family connections, and financial wellness. This provides employees with a variety of meaningful ways to embrace wellness and well-being through mindfulness, meditation, nutrition and mental wellness activities, exercise, hikes, yoga, volunteer activities, financial education sessions, social events and stress management.

Health and Safety

We prioritize the health, safety and well-being of our employees and their families. Our objective is to prevent injuries and occupational diseases by focusing first and foremost on creating and maintaining environments that are safe. We therefore offer a wide variety of robust programs and initiatives designed to promote the overall health and welfare of all our employees and their families. In addition to the compensation and benefits listed above, we offer family support services, healthcare initiatives and career services support, among many others. In addition, we have several health and safety programs in place to help protect our employees. For instance, we have training programs and courses that employees exposed to particular risks are required to take and update periodically. Examples include hazardous material training, emergency response and evacuation training, ergonomics training, biohazard and personal protective equipment training, and, more recently, COVID-19 related safety training.

We have an Environmental Health, Safety and Sustainability Director who is responsible for ensuring health and safety programs are maintained and effective at each of our locations. Major worksites, such as our aligner fabrication sites, and large offices have dedicated Environmental Health and Safety (“EHS”) departments that ensure health and safety programs are maintained while contributing Best Management Practices (“BMP”) and general input to corporate-wide programs. Each EHS department is responsible for ensuring all employees at their location are properly trained on various EHS topics and at the appropriate frequencies. A training suite is determined for each employee depending on their responsibilities and function modeled off ISO 45001.

Sustainability and the Environment

Our purpose is to transform smiles and change lives. We understand that as an organization our impact is not limited to the improvement of patient health through medically supervised use of a prescription medical device. How we interact with the environment, our employees, customers, patients, suppliers, stockholders and communities is fundamental to our purpose.

We are committed to environmental protection and continuous improvement of all environmental aspects related to our supply-chain, processes, and services. To help us achieve these commitments, we look to integrate sustainability into our business operations and products in ways that help manage our environmental impact, mitigate risk, reduce costs, and increase stockholder value.

  • EMS. We have implemented an energy management system (EMS) at all of our large manufacturing locations. The system is modeled after the ISO 14001:2015 standard and managed by our Environmental, Health and Safety (EHS) staff.
  • Renewable Energy. We have increased investments in onsite photovoltaic solar systems, with new or enlarged installations at four locations and more scheduled for 2022. We entered into agreements to procure renewable electricity for portions of our operations.
  • Smart Building. We are bringing operations closer to our customers, including breaking ground on our new manufacturing facility in Wroclaw, Poland that is scheduled to open in 2022. This site is expected to help reduce the costs and impact of transporting raw materials to our facilities and shipping costs to our customers. We are also investing in energy-efficient building designs and controls along with adopting Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) principles for all new or modified workspaces, reducing energy usage and greenhouse gas emissions. In our Turkey Istanbul office, our goal is to become certified as a LEED Gold green building. To learn more about LEED Gold certification go here.
  • Water Conservation. We have implemented initiatives to conserve water, including outfitting most of our facilities with low-flow toilets and faucet sensors, recycling water for vegetation and grey water use and installing catch basins to collect and use rainwater for operations at our manufacturing location in Juarez, Mexico.
  • Waste management. We are passionate about minimizing the impact of plastic waste on the environment and we are pleased to share information about Align’s investment in and progress toward minimizing the impact of Invisalign therapy on the environment.
  • The Invisalign System is a prescription medical device. Both the medical device and its packaging are regulated by health agencies around the world. Invisalign aligners and their packaging undergo rigorous testing ranging from biocompatibility, bioburden, strength and performance testing. Changes to the device and its packaging must be done in a controlled manner and approved by health agencies around the globe. These changes must not degrade the high quality of the product or its 26-year history of excellent orthodontic outcomes.
  • Align has been engaged in activities to minimize our impact on the environment for many years and we are committed to continued progress. We have programs to recycle plastics, reduce product packaging, decrease waste and emissions, and increase use of renewable energy. We have also opened new manufacturing facilities that are closer to our customers which helps us decrease carbon emitting activities from shipping products globally.
  • Our proprietary aligner material is a multilayer polymer designed to move teeth predictability and consistently using force systems and biomechanics. The material properties add to the complexity of recycling. The polymer or plastic used in our aligners is medical grade plastic, and once the aligners have been worn by patients, they can’t be recycled like household plastic. However, the amount of polymer in the actual aligner is in fact small compared to the amount needed to produce its mold.
  • At the production level, the scrap and waste generated by our manufacturing processes does not go into landfill. For example, the production scrap and waste from our facilities in Mexico and Poland is used for energy recovery for third parties. In China, we are repurposing 100% of the production scrap and waste for reuse in floor tiles.
  • Since 2016, we have reduced the amount of polymer content used in our aligners by almost 50% and reduced the amount of resin used in our aligner molding by 33%. We are focused on continuous improvement and expect to make further reductions over time.
  • Reducing the environmental impact of used and unused clear aligners is also a crucial aspect of sustainability and therefore we are continually exploring recycling options as well as ways to properly dispose of plastic waste, ensuring it is correctly sorted and recycled whenever possible.
  • In 2020, we began piloting an aligner recycling program with limited number of doctors in the U.S. and Brazil. The aligner recycling program encourages customers and their patients to return used and unused aligners which are recycled in partnership with TerraCycle®, an innovative recycling company that has become a global leader in recycling hard-to-recycle materials. We continue to monitor the program results and participation and are evaluating additional options, including the EMEA and APAC regions.
  • Further, we continue to invest significantly in new technologies, materials, and ways of working that can minimize the environmental impact of plastic and/or reduce our carbon footprint. We support innovations in recycling and waste management processes, and we are redesigning our packaging materials to decrease the impact of the materials used in the packaging and shipment of our products.
  • Direct Fab, or the ability to 3D-print an aligner directly without a mold, is on the horizon. We believe our digital technology and innovation in 3D printing and “direct fab” will have a significant impact on minimizing scrap and waste from our manufacturing process.
  • We are also helping doctors to operate more sustainably by reducing the need for traditional polyvinyl-siloxane (“PVS”) impressions and the mining of the materials used to make those impressions. The use of our iTero™ intraoral scanner, rather than taking a physical impression of a patient’s teeth, removes the need for physical models to be produced, eliminating emissions associated with traditional manufacturing and shipping. As a result, iTero scanners save thousands of metric tons of PVS and plastic in our process.

Reducing our environmental impact

Globally, we are committed to reducing the environmental impact of our operations by using energy efficient building designs and controls (e.g. solar panels, motion activated lights, LED lighting, etc.). In our Turkey Istanbul office, our goal is to become certified as a LEED Gold green building. To learn more about LEED Gold certification go here. We also have programs in place to reduce emissions from employee transportation by providing car charging stations that promote zero or low emissions cars, incentives for carpooling, and organizing company sponsored employee transportation. We have begun the process of eliminating single use plastics in our cafeterias.

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 choose 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.
  • We expect our suppliers 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, and respecting the rights of individuals to return to their home countries.