The honeymoon may be over this year, with stricter enforcement expected—and even more equipment, retardants, and plasticizers coming on the watch list.
BY MATT VINCENT
In the two years since the adoption of the European Union’s (EU) Reduction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) directive, the global manifestation of RoHS-like laws and initiatives is inexorably on the rise. For 2008, industry experts see the global RoHS outlook expanding most dramatically in Europe, while posting slow but steady growth in China and Asia, and continuing to wink steadily on U.S. horizons (mostly in California).
At this point, the endgame seems certain: The demands of the competitive marketplace, coupled with concerns of sound business methodology, will serve to draw manufac-turers everywhere into the spotlight of RoHS compliance.
RoHS part deux
Since the inception of RoHS as an addendum to the EU’s Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) legislation, the European Commission (EC) has led the way in increasing the scope of the directive and associated mandates, and will continue to do so this year.
“We’ve now got ‘RoHS 2, The Sequel’,” asserts Gary Nevison, director for legislation and environmental affairs for electronic components distributor Newark (www.newark.com), part of the global Premier Farnell Group. “It’s likely that, in coming years, there’ll be more RoHS reviews than there were Rocky movies.”
The EC has appointed Germany’s Oko Institute as RoHS technical consultants, tasked with assessing a complete review of the scope of products to fall under EU RoHS, along with types of restricted substances, and all of the directive’s current 29 exemption categories.
Nevison adds, “Just as businesses in America are probably starting to get used to the idea of RoHS as it was, now it will change. Will it change dramatically? It’ll definitely change—more products likely, more restricted substances likely, and exemption under review. That’s pretty significant.”
On the product front, EU RoHS originally covered eight of the 10 WEEE categories of product; omitted were medical equipment and monitoring and control equipment, including test equipment. Nevison maintains that “what is likely to happen, versus certain to happen, is that these products will now be included within scope—but not right away, to give manufacturers the chance to make the necessary design changes.”
Results of this particular review are expected by June or July, with implementation expected by about 2012.
Other “gray areas” in the original legislation slated for clarification, and for which Nevison says stand to expand the scope of products covered by RoHS, include “fixed installation” systems, such as CCTVs, alarms, heaters, air conditioning; “large scale stationary industrial tools” (i.e., permanently fixed production line equipment); and “spare parts,” most likely to be defined as products used for repairing other pieces of equipment, such as fuses.
Additionally, restricted substances expected to come under review include flame retardants and plasticizers (i.e., substances used to increase the flexibility and pliability of plastic).
As for the review of the 29 existing and seven newly proposed exemption categories, Nevison says, “that’s just to ensure that there are no suitable, more environmentally-friendly substances that can be used. And the onus is on industry to demonstrate that any suggested alternatives are no better for the environment or human health than what is currently specified. If an alternative that’s more suitable is found, the exemption will be withdrawn.”
Significantly, Nevison notes that “just about every single piece of equipment depends on at least one exemption, based on the fact that most pieces of equipment have passive components—connectors, capacitors, resistors, etc.—that rely on the ‘lead in glass’ exemption. It will be interesting to see if any of these exemptions are withdrawn.”
Enforcement far REACH-ing
On the EU RoHS enforcement front, Nevison opines that “most of the enforcement authorities around Europe agreed there would be a ‘softly, softly’ approach until around about this time (2008). I think most authorities said right from the start, right from July 2006, that 18 months would be the honeymoon period, and then enforcement would get stricter. Time will tell if it does. But stricter enforcement, I think, can be expected this year.”
Indeed, last October, the EC initiated legal proceedings against eight member states that failed to ad-equately implement RoHS or WEEE into national law (the deadline for transposition was August 2004). The commission charged that Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belgium, Denmark, Malta, Finland and Sweden had not properly implemented or transposed the directives.
First enacted in December 2006, the EU’s REACH [Registration, Evaluation and Authorization of Chemicals] legislation has been widely coined as “the nightmare after RoHS” and/or “RoHS on steroids.” REACH is comprised of 849 pages of legislation and an additional 2,000 pages of guidance notes. Part of the legislation’s goal is to establish a comprehensive database of chemical substances that are manufactured, placed on market, imported, or used in the European community. Registration is required for manufacturers, producers, or importers with a ton or more of specified chemical substances (testing requirements increase with tonnage).
“RoHS was simple,” opines Nevison. “It was eight product categories [large household appliances; small household appliances; IT and telecom equipment; consumer equipment; lighting equipment; electrical and electronic equipment; toys; automatic dispensers] and six substances [lead (PB), mercury, cadmium; hexavalent chromium, polybrominated biphenyl (PBB), polybrominated diphenyl ether (PBDE)], whereas REACH is chemicals pretty much wherever they’re used.”
Nevison continues, “I was here at the early days of RoHS when everybody was in denial. It’s even harder to get the message across to businesses now on REACH, because the view is, ‘Oh, that’s chemicals—it’s nothing to do with us.’ That’s not true. So, getting the message across on REACH will be every bit as difficult, if not more so, than RoHS.”
Substances covered by REACH include adhesives, paints and lubricants, and products in containers, such as printer cartridges or marker pens, where chemicals are intentionally released. Further, by mid-2009, the European Chemicals Agency expects to produce a list of Substances of Very High Concern (SVHC) requiring authorization for use and placement on the market.
“These are the real ‘nasties’,” adds Nevison. Substances covered include those that are carcinogenic, mutagenic, bioaccumulative, or toxic for reproduction. “Basically, if you want to sell any of these outside the EU, regardless of weight, use would have to be authorized.”
He continues, “Probably the most bizarre figure is that, of the 30,000 most popular chemicals that are used, by volume, only 3% of them have been fully tested. There’s no safety data on 21% of them and inadequate safety data on 65%. So, REACH is about having to register, and authorize, and provide the necessary level of safety data on these chemicals.”
December 2007 saw the rollout of an extensive REACH fee structure that sent a wave of “sticker shock” throughout the electronics manufacturing industry. The move sparked concern within the electronics industry that REACH could result in costly business disruption for companies that do not address this year’s pre-registration deadlines (June through November), in addition to subsequent timetables for authorization.
“If companies in the U.S. and China want to ship chemicals in, they’ll have to go through a European representative and, depending on what the chemicals are, will have to be registered and authorized,” states Nevison. “This is particularly hard on the Chinese, because they’re shipping about 10 billion dollars a year of chemicals into Europe. And it’s expected that with all the registration and authorization they would have to do, their costs would go up 7%. So, the competitive edge that they’ve had in the past may be eroded somewhat.”
In late 2007, the UK’s Chemical Business Association (CBA) issued a statement complaining that the REACH fees proposed by the European Chemicals Agency were “out of control” and “excessive in principle and practice.” The CBA contended that the fees represent a leap of 200 to 500% over the fees originally proposed by the EC, and have “reached a level where they are completely unacceptable and would inflict significant damage to the competitiveness of the industry.” The CBA also charged that multiple registrants for the same substance will “inflate the Agency’s revenue to a level which is completely unjustified in relation to the work it is actually required to do.”
Nevison sums, “The costs of having chemicals registered and authorized are absolutely huge. Authorization of the use of a chemical can be as much as 50K euros each time.” In fact, Nevison claims that the EC has suggested that 2% of all chemicals used are expected to become obsolete, as manufacturers seek to avoid the costs of putting them through the REACH process.
Slow progress elsewhere
Shifting to the other side of the globe, China RoHS gained significant traction in 2007, with the inception of the country’s ubitquitous “green arrow/orange circle” labeling schemes and the issuance of its Electronic Information Product (EIP) compliance list. This year, the Chinese standard is forecasted to make steady progress, if somewhat slower than expected, with the release of a catalog of products and product categories subject to restrictions of listed toxic and hazardous substances and/or elements.
“China RoHS is sluggishly getting up to speed,” allows Nevison. “In March of last year came the labeling stage, but stage two—which was the important part, where they’d release this catalog of substance restrictions, with implementation dates, exemptions, and products that would have to be tested within China and certified before they could be sold—that’s not now expected until late 2008.”
The reason for the delay?
Nevison explains, “Unlike RoHS in Europe—where it tends just to be one ministry, one government department in each country that’s responsible—in China, there are several ministries who all have their fingers in the pie, and there was some debate as to which ministry would actually put the catalog together. There were some meetings at the back end of last year that worked out the way forward. The end result was that we won’t see any products at all until late 2008, and that may only be a small sample. The full catalog could be delayed into 2009.”
Elsewhere in Asia, Nevison reports that RoHS movement in South Korea is now expected by the middle of the year, as opposed to the beginning, with laws in Thailand and Taiwan expected to be based mainly on EU RoHS standards. In Australia, Nevison says that companies have taken a voluntary approach to RoHS compliance, obviating a need for governmental legislation “because so much of their equipment is already shipped into the EU.”
As for the proposed version of RoHS in Norway—widely regarded as a kind of “super-RoHS” for being much broader and more stringent than the EU directive—Nevison reveals, “That’s been put on hold. They were looking at 18 substances in consumer products [and] that’s been scaring everybody. But it’s now not likely to happen. It’s been postponed [as of January 2008]. It was a slight over-reaction, because only five of those substances are used in electrical and electronic equipment.”
Noting that the common theme running through all the various RoHS initiatives around the world is maximum permitted levels of hazardous substances, Nevison concedes that “no two are exactly the same; there’s no harmonized approach.”
Whither America?
The common refrain surrounding the topic of RoHS-type legislation within the U.S. is one of, “So Far, It’s Being Handled On a State-by-State Basis.” In Washington, the scenario can be described as vague, at best. “The last thing I heard was that the EIA (www.eia.org) actually put forth to the Bush administration a platform for a federal law very much like EU RoHS, but that’s the last I heard of it,” offers Newark’s public relations/communication manager, Janice Fleisher.
The best known example of stateside RoHS legislation is in California. Attempts to expand the state’s directive toward greater stringency died last October with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s veto of Assembly Bill (AB 48), which would have greatly expanded the scope of California RoHS to mirror the European RoHS directive.
The governor cited three main objections to the California bill as written:
- That the approach taken is largely unworkable and will result in unintended and potentially more harmful consequences;
- That the language for exempting spare parts and refurbished products deviates from the EU directive and will make many electronic products prematurely obsolete, forcing their retirement years earlier than necessary, and;
- That the bill is too broad in scope and could prohibit the sale of “tens of thousands” of electrical and electronic products for the state’s consumers and businesses.
To paraphrase one of the governor’s more famous movie roles, Nevison’s view toward California’s enhanced statute is: It will be back. “He was concerned about the effects on spare parts, and the availability to repair and upgrade older equipment, so he sent it back,” observes Nevison. “From Europe, we look across the pond, and say, yeah, that will reappear—later this year, probably.”
Adds Fleisher, “The reality is, we have a global economy, so it’s very hard to hide your head in the sand unless you’re a very small player. You pretty much have to comply with what’s out there if you want to compete in the world. That’s pretty much what you have to do to really stay competitive.”
Joel Pekay, global marketing and business development director for restricted substances at Intertek ETL Semko (www.intertek-etlsemko.com), echoes this notion. In a presentation, “You Can Run But You Can’t Hide: RoHS is Just the Beginning,” delivered in January at the telecommunications association BICSI’s Winter Conference in Orlando, FL, Pekay urged manufacturers to promote their “green” products, going so far as to suggest that “if you can be green, you will sell more product.”
Managing risk
Among the possible risks to electronics manufacturers and distributors failing to grasp initiative in steps toward approaching general RoHS compliance, Pekay cited loss of sales, brand erosion, negative brand impact, negative publicity, obsolete inventory, and product recalls. For these companies, Pekay went on to assert that the big question is, “how do we comply with as many laws as possible without bankrupting ourselves? How do we start? And the next question is, where are your products sold or distributed?”
One answer is for companies to manage risk systematically by educating and collecting information at the level of the supply chain, requiring component companies to verify and validate their products.
Pekay concludes, “The key is managing risks, deciding what level of compliance is safest. I don’t think I’ve ever seen two businesses with the exact same approach.”
MATT VINCENT is senior editor for Connector Specifier.
A ‘scary’ but not harsh directive
The EU’s Energy-using Products (EuP) directive came into full effect in August 2007. The law looks at broad categories of products such as washing machines, dishwashers, HVAC systems, televisions, etc., where they’re sold in significant number across Europe. Of the directive, Newark’s director for legislation and environmental affairs, Gary Nevison, offers, “It really impacts the design engineer, but it’s not as harsh, it’s not scary as what the likes of REACH is.”
The EuP directive looks at what can be done throughout the lifecycle of products to reduce their overall energy consumption, for significant, positive environmental impact. “That includes the mining of the metals right through to the recycling of them,” says Nevison. “China will probably have some copycat-type legislation.”
According to Nevison, the European Commission (EC) is reviewing 14 broad categories of product, and throughout 2008-2009 will issue what are known as implementing measures, “which are mini-directives that will give recommendations on how products should be re-designed—the impact on the design engineer when he’s sitting down and thinking about how to design a product.”
Nevison continues, “And it could be, for example, to use LCDs instead of cathode ray tubes because they’re less hungry for power, to design products with good ventilation and low power dispersion so you don’t need to use thirsty fans, to use more efficient power management type devices. All these things will have to be looked at. And the design engineer will have to follow these implementing measures over the next couple of years.”
As this article went to press, Nevison revealed that the EC has outlined a further 25 product categories to be reviewed over the next two to three years. “So, in total you’ve probably got over 40 product categories—wide, broad-based product categories—where reviews will be taking place as to how the energy consumption can be improved.”—M.V.
