It's not less chemical intensive at all. Some aqueous processes have replaced more toxic ones. But dissolved copper and solvent waste makes up the majority of ever fabs waste stream. TSMC/Intel etc have made pretty big strides in zero landfill hazardous waste. It just gets recycled and used in other processes internally or by other companies.

I don't know what the Chinese fabs do, so I have no idea if pump their waste out into the environment.

> dissolved copper

You would think that dissolved copper would have some recovery value, given the price of copper.

I am reminded of the waste from silver halide photographic processing, which at one point was just dumped into rivers (an unfortunate amount went into the Great Lakes); when the price of silver increased, suddenly it became worthwhile to recover the silver rather than let it go down the literal drain.

FTFY: Silicon

between spelling nazis and reflexive downvoters .. who are entitled their respective actions.. what I am looking for is, how is the whole Quartz to Wafers process has become green and what kind of reduction and/or elimination of toxic materials has been achieved.

A good proper justification of the claim from the claimant or supporters of that argument is useful.

In this case the spelling nazis had rightfully pointed to the correct spelling, because the wrong spelling is not a problem of style or preferences, but it causes a confusion between two different chemical substances, with very different properties and applications.

"silicon" is the chemical element number 14, and this name, which is used in the English-speaking countries, was coined by someone who believed that it is a good idea for it to rhyme with "carbon" (actually a bad idea in my opinion)

"silicone" is the generic name for a class of plastics, i.e. the polymers with a poly-siloxane structure. This name was coined by someone who believed that it is a good idea for it to rhyme with "acetone", because he erroneously believed that these polymers have a structure similar to ketones.

Thank you. Not trying to be a spelling nazi, just that those two tend to get mixed up quite a bit and can cause people confusion.

I don’t have exact details but I did work in an civil/environment consulting companies (we worked remediating the GE silicone waste site in Upstate NY .. ) which might be why people are senesitive to the spelling.[1]

But generally those chemical engineers are pretty good at cleaning up the processes (it cheaper, also cheaper to ship manufacturing overseas…)

The Resource Conservation and Recovery act https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_Conservation_and_Re...

And toxic substance control acts seemed to rules of note.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxic_Substances_Control_Act...

GE silicones [1]https://www.epa.gov/hwcorrectiveactionsites/hazardous-waste-...