In today’s market, companies not only need to concern themselves with government enforcement, but also customer requirements.
In today’s global market, equipment companies need not only know about safety, performance, and quality, but they also need to keep an eye on the amount of hazardous substances contained within the final product. Many industrialized countries and areas have restricted the use of certain hazardous substances in equipment.
In 2006, product environmental compliance in the electronics industry began with the EU’s Restriction on the use of certain Hazardous Substances in electrical and electronic equipment Directive (commonly referred to as RoHS). RoHS is in a state of change, as documented in Table 1. Companies were busy gathering documents and data-information sheets on whether or not a part contained the restricted six substances: lead, mercury, hexavalent chromium, cadmium, poly-brominated biphenyls (PBBs), and poly-brominated biphenyl ethers (PBDEs). Companies did not focus on this task as a process, but as a once-and-done project. In 2007, when China released its version of RoHS for electronics, the requirements were different, as were the products covered; and companies scrambled to make changed to their projects to meet the new requirements. In addition to the RoHS–type requirements, companies also need to know about the reporting requirements for regulations such as EU REACH.
In 2008, with the introduction of EU’s Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and registration of CHemicals regulation (REACH), the list of substances increased to more than double the number of substances in the RoHS Directive; with the potential to exceed thousands of reportable substances. Nowadays, with every country looking at its own list, where do you start? Companies must look at the big picture now and treat product environmental compliance as a process, not a project. Companies should focus on how all the countries and various legislations paint a total picture, not just focus on each individual country and its legislation. An audit of the product-environmental-compliance program does just this. The company saves money by taking the insight and direction from an audit.
Understanding, tracking, and meeting the multiple environmental requirements around the world, without driving yourself crazy, is a daunting task. Companies typically focus too much on the details and not the overall picture. Additionally, companies focus on the individual countries as individual projects, when they should be looking at the matrix of countries and requirements—finding the lowest common denominator and creating a process for compliance.
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