I've received two announcements concerning the EU REACH and RoHS regulations which need to be taken very seriously.
A note from Intertek, a company which advises companies on compliance warns that the EU is getting tougher and better organised to police their regulations. According to Torben Norlem, Health and Environment Chief Counsel at Intertek they are formulatingplans to work together to better enforce the RoHS (Restriction of Hazardous Substances) regulations in Europe that ban hazardous substances from electrical and other household and commercial products. He also pointed out an important deadline is looming. Manufacturers, importers and distributors of hazardous chemicals have until December 1 thisyear to pre-register their substances with the EU. The EU wants to know about all the chemicals currently in use throughout all industries, which number thousands. Not all these may be hazardous, but the EU wants to know what they are and some basic details to be in a position to start making judgments. The initiative covers all chemicals whether in liquid, gas or power form.
So as not to gum up the system completely pre-registration needs less detail and is aimed at getting a list of companies, the chemicals in use and the amount used too. By pre-registering, and this is the important bit, companies using over 1,000 tons of chemical will not then need to fully register until 2010. Between 100 tons and 1,000 tons will be given until 2014 to register, and under that amount companies will get until 2018 to fully register.
By not pre-registering any data companies will find themselves banned from using the chemicals and end users could be barred from selling products which include the chemicals.
This edict Norlem emphasises applies to any electronics manufacturer which buys its own chemicals.
The move to better police the RoHS regulations follows criticism of a lack of effective monitoring to enforce compliance with the laws, encouraging some companies to continue selling products with hazardous substances over allowable limits.
Government bodies across Europe now plan to improve the effectiveness of their RoHS monitoring and resources dedicated to it by adopting a cross-border model, following successful efforts by Nordic countries. In 2007, the Nordic countries united their RoHS programmes and increased the depth of monitoring and reporting of non-compliances by sharing data cross-border.
The Nordic countries’ approach was to divide the industries and products covered by RoHS between them so that each focused on a dedicated industry in more depth and then share that data. The wider EU countries are likely to consider the same.
Says Norlem,“Many suppliers sell products in multiple European countries. If the EU enforcement authorities share more data between them, they can better identify non-compliant products across all countries and utilise their available resources collectively”.
The reporting of non-compliances by EU governments is also increasing and new cross-border RoHS monitoring collaborations are likely see more reporting on the outcome of their activities annually.
Norlem continues: “EU governments are also looking at more international collaboration with local-RoHS monitoring authorities in China and the United States. Many products sold in Europe are that of companies trading worldwide, so there is scope for more collaboration internationally”. Intertek hosted a forum in which EU and Chinese, and EU and Taiwanese authorities met, respectively, in Shanghai and Taipei on November 16 and 19, 2007 to present and discuss this. A further forum is being organized for February 2009 with California’s DTSC
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