Maintaining Environmental Compliance
Are you a manufacturer who frequently introduces new and updated version of your products in the market? Have you ever checked whether your products maintain environmental compliance or do they contribute to the increasing electronic waste? Ensuring the proper disposal of your old and obsolete products is one of the primary measures to obtain environmental compliance. Focus on maintaining a safe environment. Review the guidelines of the laws and rules regarding environmental compliance, and find out which all are applicable for your product. Be aware about the laws of European Union, before the manufacturing of a product. The European Union opines that manufacturers should themselves take the responsibility to curb down the hazards caused by their products. RoHS and WEEE are two of the laws that are implemented by the European Union, aiming the same. RoHS (Restriction of Hazardous Substances) restricts the use of certain harmful substances, such as lead, cadmium, mercury and polybrominated flame retardants from being used in the manufacturing of a product. The European Union (EU) also asks the manufacturers to maintain WEEE compliance for their products, according to the guidelines mentioned in the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directive. Make proper arrangements to collect back the used equipments and recycle or reuse them. If not, create a proper waste disposal system. Also, go through the principles of REACH (Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals) and make sure that your product abides by them. According to REACH EU, you have to collect the safety information about the chemicals used and register your product with ECHA (European Chemicals Agency).
RoHS and WEEE – to minimize e-waste
The Directive on the restriction of the use of certain hazardous substances in electrical and electronic equipment, popularly known as the Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive (RoHS), and the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive (WEEE), were two of the initiatives adopted by the European Union, in order to solve the issues of increasing electronic waste (e-waste), which pose threat to life, health and environment. Each member state of the European Union is bound to abide by the guidelines mentioned in the directives and manufacture RoHS and WEEE compliant products. However, they can resort to take their own measures for implementing the rules. The RoHS directive restricts the use of certain substances in the manufacture of the Electrical and Electronic Equipments (EEEs). It is commonly known as the lead-free directive, but the use of certain other harmful substances is also prohibited under the RoHS Directive. These include mercury, cadmium, hexavalent chromium and the polybrominated flame retardants such as, polybrominated biphenyls (PBB) and polybrominated diphenyl ether (PBDE). These cause harm not only to the environment, but also to the health conditions of the employees in the firm and users of the product. The WEEE directive assigns the responsibility of managing the e-wastes to the manufacturing firm. It directs the manufacturers to collect the e-waste and make provisions for its reuse or recycle. The obsolete or used electrical and electronic goods also are termed as e-waste. WEEE directive applies to the small and large scale household appliances, electrical and electronic tools, lighting equipments, etc. Some of the medical devices, monitoring and control instruments and IT and telecommunications equipments are, however, exempted from being WEEE compliant.
Environmental compliance services – beyond the EU
For the average office, environmental compliance management probably rotates around waste recycling and energy usage. However, for the electrical or mechanical engineering company things are far more complex, especially if you ship goods abroad. RoHS, WEEE and REACH EU regulations don’t just affect companies based within Europe – they affect any company trading with the European Union. What is more, many other markets are now governed by laws related to those within the EU. RoHS and REACH compliance have become global issues, making environmental compliance management mandatory for engineering firms, even those trading at a local level. When considering environmental compliance management, you have to consider world conflict and political issues, as well as the harm your products may be doing to the environment. For example, is your company guilty of using conflict minerals? This has nothing to do with the REACH directive, but with the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which was signed by President Obama in July 2010, and came into effect in April 2011. The Act called for a sweeping reform of the US financial regulatory system, which among other things required that any company listed on the US Stock Exchange must declare any Conflict Minerals mined in the DRC zone. In other words, any minerals mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and adjoining African countries suffering armed conflict. With so many global mandates now in force, many engineering companies are turning to us at Enventure Technologies. We offer a comprehensive range of environmental compliance services which cover everything from ROHS compliance to the Dodd–Frank mandate.
GADSL and the ELV directive – how do they affect your company?
The ELV (end of life vehicle) directive is similar to the RoHS and WEEE compliance schemes, in that it was an EU directive designed to restrict the amount of hazardous materials reaching the environment. This was achieved in two ways: by restricting the substances used in the manufacture of new vehicles and their components, and by environmentally aware recycling methods. Unlike RoHS, WEEE and REACH, the ELV directive is specific to automotive engineering. However, with ASIC and VLSI designs being integral to modern automotive engineering, it has an impact on many electronic and component engineering firms, both in the EU and globally. Like the REACH directive, ELV compliance has been adopted across the world, with most countries on the global manufacturing platform having their own versions in place. The GADSL (Global Automotive Declarable Substance List) is intrinsically linked to both the ELV directive and the IMDS (International Material Data System), which was established in response to the directives being put in place. The IMDS was established by OEMs in order to establish a global tracking and logging system for materials being used in automotive parts and accessories. It requires that all parts and components used in automotive assemblies and sub-assemblies list the chemicals used in their manufacture. The lynch pin of this is the GADSL, which is a list of all prohibited and declarable substances used in automotive applications, together with threshold limits. If you engineer mechanical or electronic components for the automotive industry, these rules affect you. We at Enventure Technologies offer environmental compliance solutions for all engineering sectors, with particular expertise in the area of GADSL and ELV compliance.
Does your ASIC design reflect a conflict of material interests?
Every printed circuit board and VLSI design seems to rotate around checking if solders are RoHS compliant, and if corrosion coatings obey the REACH directive. Now, there’s a new question – does it involve using conflict minerals? Conflict minerals have nothing to do with WEEE and RoHS directives, but with the humanitarian crisis in Africa, and the passing of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, signed by President Obama in July 2010. At the time seemingly of little relevance to PCB design materials, it represented the biggest financial shake-up in the US since the Depression. But a number of statutes regarding overseas trading were introduced, including that concerning conflict minerals. Conflict minerals are certain ores which have been mined in the DRC Zone, an area of conflict which encompasses the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the adjoining countries of Angola, Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, Sudan, Uganda, Zambia, and the Central African Republic. This is an area of extreme and ongoing violence, involving civilian atrocities on an unimaginable scale. An estimated seven million people – many of them women and children – have died since hostilities began. The list of conflict minerals includes Tantalum, Wolframite and Cassiterite – all of which are used in electronic circuitry and VHDL design. By law, any engineering company listed with the US stock exchange, who uses these products, must declare if they originated from the DRC Zone. No engineering company in the US wants to fund the DRC hostilities, but it’s often hard to gauge where products originate. We at Enventure Technologies offer a wide range of environmental compliance services, and are one of the few companies covering conflict minerals legislation.