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. By the end of 2021, we will consider whether the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) guidelines are the appropriate lens to view our ESG disclosures. 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

We believe in changing the world in which our employees, customers, suppliers and friends live, play, and work for the better, starting with transforming smiles. 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 and are extremely proud of our corporate commitment to philanthropic work and are equally proud of the generosity and dedication of our employees.

Our efforts to better the world include:

The Align Foundation

Launched in 2020, the Align Foundation provides the flexibility to provide smaller monetary donations, processes to donate our products, a structured way for us to direct significant donations from a donor-advised fund through Fidelity Charitable, as well as an organized way to involve our employees in giving activities. In March 2020, we funded $1 million to support COVID-19 relief efforts globally and donated personal protective equipment (PPE) such as N95 masks and worked with partners to source supplies for additional PPE to help hospitals and healthcare providers. To date, Align has contributed over $4.6 million to charitable causes including Operation Smile, America’s Toothfairy, and other non-profits dedicated to youth development through schools and educational programs.

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 more than 60 countries. We sponsored Operation Smile’s 2018 International Student Leadership Conference. In recognition of our support, Align received Operation Smile's Corporate Humanitarian Award.

Learn more

 

Month of Smiles

In 2018 we established the Month of Smiles, a dedicated month of giving when all employees are encouraged to donate their time and talent to make a difference in the lives of others. In 2019, many of our offices around the world organized community service activities so that employees could work together as teams to help others. In addition, employees took time to give back to causes that are meaningful to them through volunteer activities, personal donations, and intentional acts of kindness. Over the last 2 years, our employees have volunteered over 10,000 hours as part of our dedicated month of giving in October called Month of Smiles.

America’s Tooth Fairy

America’s Toothfairy’s mission is to ensure underserved children in the United States can access dental care and learn about oral health by supporting nonprofit clinics and community partners. Align has provided 12 years of support for America’s ToothFairy, providing almost $2 million dollars for the foundation’s operational expenses and children’s oral health programs, and helping more than eight million children and their caregivers learn about preventing tooth decay and gum disease.


This past year, with Align’s help, America’s Toothfairy was able to reach over 600,000 children with oral health education and hygiene instruction! Click on the image above, and you will see the video highlighting the impact of our generous contribution. You can find America’s Toothfairy’s annual report here.



 

 

Cristo Rey San Jose
High School

Align has partnered with Cristo Rey San Jose 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.

Employees

At Align, 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.


We also know that fostering diversity and encouraging inclusion in the workplace makes Align a more welcoming and enjoyable place to work.


It creates innumerable benefits for our employees, customers, consumers and organization, including inspiring the development and delivery of more desirable products, improving customer satisfaction, and lowering employee turnover. We believe we are at our best, and our success has been driven by, different backgrounds, beliefs, perspectives and capabilities in our workforce.

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 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.

Month of Wellness

Month of Wellness is a worldwide movement fostering employee health. We recognize that a strong and growing company needs healthy employees, and we are committed to promoting wellness as part of our culture. The Month of Wellness provides employees with a variety of wellness activities and initiatives worldwide to support their overall wellbeing in areas such as nutrition, fitness, financial planning, and stress management.

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.

Align has been honored with numerous awards for our positive work environment and culture, most recently the Great Place to Work in Brazil along with others:

For the second year in a row, Align was named one of the Best Places to Work in IT by Computerworld who surveyed organizations across the U.S. to identify those that provide the best benefits and amenities for IT professionals. Among the attributes contributing to the award were our training, health insurance, retirement funding, flexible time off policies, and collaborative work environments.

The Canadian Great Place to Work ("GPTW") program recognized Align as a top workplace in both 2019 and 2020 in the areas of Giving Back, Managed by Women, and in Healthcare. Companies were ranked based on employee responses to the GPTW Trust Index survey.

For the third year in a row, the Triangle Business Journal ("TBJ") named Align's Raleigh, North Carolina office among the Top 50 Best Places to Work in the Triangle area based on employee feedback to a TBJ survey.

Sustainability

We continue to innovate for a more sustainable future for our planet. In 2019 we remained focused on reducing our impact on the environment and our climate with efforts to reduce product packaging, recycling plastics, decreasing waste and emissions, and increasing renewable energy usage.

  • We opened new facilities and manufacturing sites that are closer to our customers which helps us decrease carbon emitting activities from shipping our products globally.
  • We have reduced the amount of plastic used in our aligners by almost 50% in just over four years. In addition, we collect and ship the majority of all scrap/waste plastics generated by our manufacturing processes to an incinerator. The resulting energy powers its operations while substantially reducing plastics sent to landfills.
  • In 2019, our Juarez, Mexico manufacturing sites received two awards from the State of Chihuahua in recognition of our environmental efforts; one for environmental best practices and the other for environmental compliance.
  • We encourage usage of iTero scanners to reduce the need for traditional impressions and the mining of the materials used to make those impressions.

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.

Our partnership with TerraCycle®

We launched an Invisalign clear aligner recycling program, currently in a pilot phase in the U.S. and Brazil, that 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.

Suppliers

We believe in transparent and responsible business practices, including in our relationship with those who work in our supply chain. 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. For instance, 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 (DRC) and adjoining countries by requiring them to source such minerals from socially responsible suppliers. Additionally, we participate in organizations focused on conducting operations in a socially and environmentally responsible manner, including organizations that support social, environmental, and ethical responsibility globally.