Introduction to the MarketEye Environmental & Supply Chain Page

02.13.2009 // Posted by: Tom Valliere // Posted in: Articles, Supply Chain

Statements of fact and or opinions expressed in MarketEye by its contributors are the responsibility of the authors alone and do not imply an opinion of the officers or the representatives of TTI, Inc.

Welcome to the new environment and supply chain section of the MarketEye blog. Design Chain Associates, LLC in partnership with TTI, will be bringing to Market Eye readers timely posts regarding the electronics industry and the environment.

The intent of these posts is to give viewers to the MarketEye site a glimpse into global environmental issues and the emerging standards and legislation that affect our industry today and in the future.

The United States, lagging in these areas, is expected to place a renewed emphasis on environmental issues in the coming years. Currently we have an emerging hodge-podge of legislation from various states resulting in a patchwork of newly adopted and emerging standards that will be difficult to manage from an industry perspective. A harmonized national approach must be developed and implemented. Industry involvement is necessary to accomplish that. DCA is involved in a broad cross section of industry standards organizations, Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) and legislative advisory committees to provide guidance from an industry perspective. Accordingly some of DCA’s offerings in this column will include editorial comment and opinion as well as solicitation of input and your concerns and opinions.

As with any endeavor, there are boundaries.  This environmental page is constrained by space and frequency.  How to best address these limitations has been deeply debated within DCA. There is so much content that it would be easy to reduce this column to a news-service headline machine without providing substance or background on any specific topic.  We have rejected that in favor of having each edition focus on a specific issue and provide some depth and guidance. (Please note, we are not providing complete information nor is it intended this be your only source of information on these topics. If available, we will provide the url to the source site.)

Where indicated due to impact or timeliness, we will diverge slightly to provide “headline” material that we feel is critical to the reader.  We have done so in this edition providing information and links to an EU REACH proposal and California Green Chemistry Initiative – both of which are time-sensitive and seeking industry input.

Our first post will update readers on expanded Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS2) and updated WEEE directives as proposed by the European Commission on Dec. 3, 2008.

Future articles will address:

• Energy-using Products (EuP) directives and impact
Management, measurement, and control of your Carbon and Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions Flame retardant usage, legislation, and impact The probable impact of REACH legislation today, what you should be doing now, and what to expect tomorrow Design for Environment (DFE) information and tips on developing a holistic product strategy WEEE and related take-back and disposal legislation, particularly from a producer responsibility perspective Environmental Health and Safety (EH&S) issues

There will be four primary contributors for these articles:

• Mike Kirschner, DCA President, will address government / industry collaboration and REACH issues
• Ken Stanvick, DCA Sr. VP, will discuss RoHS and other substance restrictions as well as Carbon and Green House Gas (GHG) issues
• Walt Rosenberg, DCA VP, will discuss Social and Environmental Health and Safety (EH&S) issues
• Tom Valliere, DCA Sr. VP, will address supply chain impacts and unintended consequences

RoHS/WEEE Updates

On Dec. 3, 2008, The European Commission proposed changes to both the RoHS and WEEE directives. These documents in their entirety may be accessed at http://ec.europa.eu/environment/waste/weee/index_en.htm

Some of the significant changes are summarized below.

RoHS

• Changes in the legal text to clarify scope and definitions, in particular by creating a binding list of products defining the scope of the RoHS Directive (Annex II)
• Introduction of all relevant provisions already used in the EU "Marketing of products” package of legislation concerning, in particular national market surveillance activities and mechanisms for assessing the conformity of the product – CE marking of products with EC Declaration of Conformity
  • Article 16 Presumption of conformity; Member States shall presume electrical and electronic equipment bearing the CE marking as conforming to this Directive. Electrical and electronic equipment on which tests and measurements have been performed in accordance with harmonized standards, the references of which have been published in the Official Journal of the European Union, shall be presumed to comply with all the relevant requirements of this Directive to which such standards relate
• Adaptation of the procedure for exemptions, for instance by introducing additional socio-economic criteria for granting exemptions and a requirement for applicants to evaluate substitutes before submitting a request
  • Exemption Mechanism
    • The 4-year review has been replaced with a 4-year maximum validity period for exemptions, with a possibility of requesting renewals
    • New exemption criteria have been introduced covering the availability and reliability of substitutes and the inclusion of socio-economic impacts
    • The Commission now has a mandate to establish detailed rules for exemption requests to establish legal certainty for economic operators pending a Commission decision on a renewal request
  • Inclusion in a staged manner medical devices and control and monitoring instruments within the scope of RoHS –
    • Medical devices and monitoring and control instruments which are placed on the market from 1st January 2014, to in vitro medical devices which are placed on the market from 1st January 2016 and to industrial monitoring and control instruments which are placed on the market from 1st January 2017
    • Does not apply to active implantable medical devices. By 2020 the Commission shall review the exclusion of active implantable medical devices with a view to propose inclusion
    • A new annex with exemptions specific to the new product categories (medical devices and control and monitoring instruments) is added for cases where substitution is currently not feasible
  • Establishing a clear mechanism for identifying and if necessary restricting the use of additional hazardous substances, exploiting all possible synergies with EU chemicals legislation and a list of hazardous substances to be examined as a matter of urgency via this mechanism
    • A mechanism for introducing new substance bans in line with the REACH methodology is inserted to ensure coherence and maximize synergy with the work carried out under the chemicals' legislation
  • The list of banned substances is not changed, however, 4 substances are identified for priority assessment in view of a possible future inclusion in the list of banned substances
    • ANNEX III: Substances referred to in Article 4(7)
    1. Hexabromocyclododecane (HBCDD)
    2. Bis (2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP)
    3. Butyl benzyl phthalate (BBP)
    4. Dibutylphthalate (DBP)
    • AnnexVI has been added to include a list of materials and their application which are exempted from the ban in Article (4) 1 in regards to Categories 8 and 9

WEEE

• Harmonize the registration and reporting obligations for producers and make national registers of producers inter-operational so that producers need only register and report in one Member State for all their activities in the EU. This is expected to lead to potential savings of €60 million
  • The current directive requires producers to register and report differently in each Member State they place products on the market, causing them significant administrative burden. To reduce the burden of implementing the WEEE Directive the Commission proposes to harmonize registration and reporting obligations for producers by making the registers inter-operational. In this way producers will need only register in one Member State for all their activities in the EU
• To transfer certain annexes on the scope of the current WEEE Directive to the RoHS Directive (under article 95 of the Treaty). The scope of the WEEE Directive will refer to one of the RoHS annexes which outlines the 10 product categories that the directives apply to
  • All appliances in the 10 product categories covered by the annex of the RoHS Directive will fall under the scope of the WEEE Directive. Member States can go beyond these 10 product categories for the WEEE Directive (under article 175 of the Treaty)

• Clarification on which appliances are excluded from the scope of the directive (e.g.: fixed installations)
  • The proposal clarifies the exclusion of certain products from the scope of the directives. These exclusions were either already in the present WEEE Directive or were interpreted as excluded from the scope by the Commission's FAQ document on WEEE

• A future comitology decision that will categorize types of appliances as household (B2C – business to consumer) and non-household appliances (B2B – business to business)
  • Categorizing the appliances as B2C and B2B will clarify producers' financial and organizational obligation (being different for these 2 categories or products) and aims to reduce free riding on the market
  • Producer responsibility/financing
  Member States, where appropriate, should encourage producers to finance the cost of collection facilities of waste electrical and electronic equipment from private households
  • To harmonize producer financing across the EU. Some Member States already make producers fully financially responsible for the whole of the WEEE collection
  • Shift payments for the collection of WEEE from tax payers to consumers of electrical and electronic equipment – through producers – to bring financing in line with the polluter pays principle set out in the Treaty

Other headlines

EU REACH - The European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) has proposed seven substances to subject to the authorization process. You may provide technical and non-technical inputs to the process during the current stakeholder consultation process, which runs through April 14. See http://echa.europa.eu/consultations/authorisation/draft_recommendations_en.asp for more information.

California Green Chemistry Initiative - The state of California has only two years to develop a new chemicals policy and they are now moving into high gear. There will be disclosure requirements for consumer products (we do not yet know whether that will include electronics but the desire is to make it as broad as possible) and a substance database for use by the public and manufacturers. Industry input and participation is highly desired. See http://www.dtsc.ca.gov/PollutionPrevention/GreenChemistryInitiative/ for more information.

Please direct questions and suggestions to info@designchainassociates.com.

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