Purchasers face new environmental deadline
By Purchasing Staff -- Purchasing, 5/25/2006 2:00:00 AM
Buyers at electronics companies which sell equipment into Europe have worked hard over the past two years to make sure their suppliers comply with the Restriction of Hazardous Substances law, which goes into effect July 1. The European Union directive bans the use of lead, mercury and four other substances in electronics equipment.
However, there is another environmental deadline on the horizon. The Energy Using Products (EuP) law is scheduled to go into effect August 2007. “EuP is complementary to RoHS,” says Michael Kirschner, president of Design Chain Associates, a supply chain consultant in San Francisco. “It addresses more material usage in terms of amount rather than type as well as energy utilization during the manufacturing and use phase of the product,” he says. The directive covers electronic products that are shipped into the EU or sold there if quantities are 200,000 or more. It would include products such as computers and televisions and other consumer electronics equipment.
This year, the directive makes no legal requirements of electronics equipment manufacturers, but that will likely change next year.
“Right now it is a framework directive,” says Kirschner. “The EU wants industry to define an ecological profile for products, which will be a metric. This metric would be used by a consumer who is trying to decide what type of notebook computer to buy for instance,” he says. “The profile would show how ecologically good the computer is in terms of energy utilization, and materials utilization.”
The EuP directive requires that energy usage of a product be measured including the amount of energy needed to process the raw materials used in the computer and in the manufacture of it and the amount of energy it would consume through its life.
The European Commission (EC), which oversees the directive, is trying to figure if it needs “implementing measures.” Such measures would result in legal requirements on electronics manufacturers. “Hopefully the industry can rally and agree on voluntary standards and not have to be regulated,” says Kirschner.
By July 2007, the EC will decide if implementing measures are needed and Kirschner says some measures are likely.
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