According to the survey conducted by Greenpeace in 2018, it is founded that Styrofoam, discarded fishing gage (such as fishing nets and buoying device) and plastic bottles are dominant plastic waste is scattered in Taiwan’s coastline.

There have been complete recycling system in Taiwan for plastic bottles and fishing nets, and recycled materials have been developed for sale into the market. However, the styrofoam’s requirement of large storage volume and the transportation make the cost much higher than the recycling benefits, so the sustainable solution hasn’t been developed. The solution to the problem has become a thorny issue of the environment and make the relevant administration units helpless.

Moreover, affected by ocean currents and the northeast monsoon, at least 100 tons of abandoned Styrofoam accumulates on the shores of Taiwan Island each year, and causing a serious environmental impact.

Therefore, LITEON adheres to the spirit of CSR and actively launches a project to recycle plastics from the sea, and hopes to promote the marine waste and the marine conservation issues through the beach clean-up activities from the internal volunteer system of the enterprise, to the external cooperation with environmental consultants, public welfare groups, social enterprises, research units and government units.

With inspiration from one of the most outstanding martial arts in Jin Yong's novels, "Dragon's Eighteen Palms", the LITEON CSR team has schemed up beach the beach of the sea, and called it " Dragon's Eighteen Events "(Dragon and Styrofoam are pronounced the same in Chinese). The events has been held around Taiwan, and it is hoped that it will attract more people to pay attention to the problem of the sea waste Styrofoam and solve it together.

To raise awareness of ocean conservation and pollution, LITEON volunteers organized coastal cleanups to take action to support ocean conservation. LITEON held 14 coastal cleanup events in 2020. The events together connected 21 external sponsors and gathered 1,459 volunteers who provided a total of 3,548 hours of service. The coastal cleanups in New Taipei City, Taoyuan, Changhua, Yunlin, Tainan, Yilan, Kinmen, and Lanyu cleared away a total of 10,063 kg of marine waste. In particular, LITEON held Taiwan's first tech industry coastal cleanup aimed specifically at recycling marine plastic waste. This event brought together volunteers from four companies, which were LITEON, Advantech, Compal Electronics, and Poseidon Global Industries. The volunteers cleaned up the beach and sorted 1.7 tonnes of marine plastic waste to be recycled instead of being incinerated directly. This was consistent with the initiative to combine marine conservation and a circular economy.

Under the premise of achieving environmental sustainability with the epidemic control measures taken into account, LITEON SEA HOPE volunteers would continue to visit different locations and follow marine waste pollution, marine ecosystem conservation, and sustainable use of marine resources and related issues.

Capture Dragon 18 Moves - I. Anti-Dragon No Regrets

Derived from one of the most outstanding martial arts in Jin Yong's martial arts novels, the LIETON CSR team specially named the themed beach cleaning operation of marine waste Styrofoam as "18 Subduing Dragon Moves ". In 2019, the first event "Anti-Dragon No Regrets" was held at Laomei Beach. LIETON volunteers cooperated with social enterprises, removed 200 kg of marine waste Styrofoam within 2 hours. Demonstrate the treatment technology by the solvent method to reduce the volume that effectively solves the large size and difficult transportation of marine waste Styrofoam, announcing the official launch of the marine waste Styrofoam recycling economy plan.

Capture Dragon 18 Moves - II. Flying Dragon in the Sky

On the inaccessible coast, the unique sea erosion terrain has also become a corner of the accumulation of sea debris. In addition to destroying the coastal landscape, the plastic pollution caused by it poses a great threat to the marine ecology.

If action is the beginning of change, beach cleaning may be the starting point for reversing the ocean’s dilemma. On the eve of Earth Day 2019, LITEON volunteers came to “Worry- Free Coast” in Keelung and went to places that are usually off the beaten track to clean the beach with volunteer groups and local people. Volunteers climbed rocks and waded, lined up along the shallow water in an orderly manner, passing the marine waste Styrofoam, like a white dragon soaring out of the valley.

Not only does LITEON look forward to restoring the natural appearance of the coast, LITEON also hopes to speak out for the injured ocean through themed beach cleaning activities and on-site records, and invite the public to join LITEON’s concern about the issue of the abandoned Styrofoam on the coast of Taiwan.

Capture Dragon 18 Moves - III. Double Dragons out to Sea

Starting from caring about society and environmental protection issues, LITEON has joined hands with domestic social enterprises that can treat marine waste Styrofoam, the Penghu County Environmental Protection Bureau, and LITEON’s suppliers to effectively solve the problem of marine waste Styrofoam treatment and reuse, and further develop a circular economy and fulfill corporate social responsibilities.

To celebrate the 2019 World Ocean Day, Lite-On participated in the Penghu Environmental Protection Bureau's beach cleaning activity on June 22. At the same time, LITEON also gave keyboard and mouse products as gift to the bureau made from recycled marine waste Styrofoam. LITEON assisted Penghu County to clean up and dispose of marine waste Styrofoam, and named this rare joint effort "Double Dragons out to Sea" as a milestone in each other's efforts for environmental sustainability.

Capture Dragon 18 Moves - IV. Dragon Aboards the Paper of Hope

On the weekend of the first week of 2020, LITEON marine volunteers returned to the Lao-mei beach, and launched the fourth type of the 18 Subduing Dragon Moves: Dragon on the Paper of Hope.

Volunteers worked hard to clean up the beaches and rock piles, and realized that the marine garbage was so endless. A total of 250Kg of Styrofoam were cleaned up. Such a large amount of Styrofoam was also handed over to Qihui Tech Company for making into recycled plastic.

The environmental problems caused by marine waste Styrofoam include its easy decomposition into fine particles into the ocean, and adsorption of persistent organic pollutants in the ocean into the food chain. Led by the teacher and students of Yingge Vocational High School, the volunteers used the Styrofoam microplastic particles collected from the beach to create a unique hand-made paper commemorative notebook, turning the annoying Styrofoam microplastic into a blessed energy of the ocean.

Capture Dragon 18 Moves - V. Gold Carp Jumps over the Dragon Gate

On May 8, 2020, LITEON donated the world’s first "Marine Waste Styrofoam On-site Volume Reduction Container" to the Penghu and Kinmen County governments, which greatly helped the local governments of outlying islands to dispose of hundreds of metric tons of marine waste Styrofoam problems, make the Styrofoam recycling and treatment mechanism more perfect.

On June 6, 2020, the governor of Kinmen led various bureaus and units of the county government to invite representatives of the Marine Conservation Department, Environmental Protection Agency, LITEON Technology, Qihui Recycle Tech. and other industry officials to gather at Fuguodun Beach in Kinmen. More than 500 people from local villagers, community environmental volunteers and related organizations used coastal beach cleaning to remove marine waste Styrofoam and release fish fry and other marine conservation actions in response to the first National Ocean Day. After the container is opened, the marine waste Styrofoam cleaned by volunteers can be put into the container to reduce its capacity. Everyone witnessed a new milestone in the recycling and treatment mechanism of sea waste foam plastics.

This action also officially declared that under the guidance of the policy of paying tribute to the sea at the first National Ocean Day, private enterprises and the public sector have joined hands to commit themselves to a good example of sustainable marine environmental conservation. LITEON is also very happy to see that the world's first marine waste Styrofoam on-site capacity reduction model has been adopted by more local governments, and it will be more concrete and feasible as a model to be extended to other friendly countries in the future.

Capture Dragon 18 Moves - VI. Yield Dragon Appeared in Ruifang

The northeastern corner of Taiwan is mostly rocky shores. A large amount of marine debris brought by the monsoon is often stuck in the rock cracks and grooves that never leave. The rough terrain makes the collection and removal of marine waste quite difficult. Due to safety considerations, there are few beach cleaning activities. In this kind of terrain, a large amount of marine wastes of different old and new are scattered on the coast of Ruifang, and it can be seen that many marine waste Styrofoam have accumulated here for a long time, breaking into pieces of snowflakes.

Different from walking on the beach, transporting a large amount of marine waste from under the headland is quite a test of the physical strength of everyone. The experienced volunteers quickly organized a line of people to pass on the garbage. On the huge coastal rock slope that is hundreds of meters long, more than a hundred volunteers took over three times to complete the transportation of 572Kg of marine waste, presenting the legend of the white dragon in the northeast coast.