FROM EDN EUROPE: Make and break: designing for the big crunch
By Graham Prophet, Editor -- EDN, January 8, 2004
January 1, 2004. Apart from affording me the opportunity to wish all of EDN Europe's readers a very successful year ahead, does that date have any other resonance? There are, no doubt, many reasons why the date should be notable, but here is just one: At one point, it was the date on which the provisions of the European Union directive known as WEEE were due to come into force. The directive generates its own set of initials in other languages, but in English it expands to the Directive on Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment. These days, it tends to be paired with a companion initiative with the equally catchy title, ROHS (reduction of use of certain hazardous substances).
Among other objectives, these directives seek to put in place the means by which companies recycle electrical and electronic products and to eliminate the use of some toxic materials. (Most products are destined for landfill if nothing changes.) A major concern is to reduce the release of toxic materials into the environment during product disposal; some of the routes include leaching into watercourses, if products are dumped, or into the atmosphere, if assemblies are incinerated.
This territory has become familiar if for no other reason than that it embodies the move to "lead-free" manufacturing. You may be unaware, however, that there is a list of substances in addition to lead, that the directives seek to keep out of products, both for the exposure they may entail during their service life and to prevent their release into the environment during product disposal. You might not even recognise some of the substances, such as polybrominated biphenyls and polybrominated diphenyl esters. (PC-board laminates commonly use these flame retardants. Without them, the resin-impregnated pc boards would burn enthusiastically.) Other substances are more elemental and include toxic metals, such as mercury, cadmium, and hexavalent chromium.
As you look around Europe, to say that awareness—not to mention implementation—varies widely would be an understatement. Most large companies have programmes in place to source components to the appropriate specifications and to foster design for dismantling so that end-of-life recycling is at least feasible. But many small to midsized enterprises appear to have made few moves in those directions. In some countries and in some product groups, prototypes of the end-of-life take-back schemes that the directives envisage and that place the responsibility for product disposal on the original manufacturer, are well-developed. In other locations, nothing has been done, and the use of landfill grows apace.
This diversity of experience is one, probably inevitable, result of the fact that the original date for implementation of the directives was deferred for two years until 2006. This postponement allowed those who were minded to move ahead on their environmental programmes the time to do so and allowed equal freedom to others to procrastinate.
But the measures are coming, and the two years' time remaining is not much to take the provisions into account. It is not all downside: Companies that have carefully studied design for dismantling have reported that the insights they've gained can lead to substantial economies in manufacturing, too. Then, there is the matter of brand image. I found the following "environmental information" listed on the outside of a Sony DVD player, which I chose at random from a bunch of products stacked up in a UK store: Lead-free solder is used for soldering in certain portions, halogen flame retardant is not used in the printed-wiring board of the main portion, and halogen flame retardant is not used in the front panel.
What does this information mean to the average EU consumer? Probably not much—yet. But in the fiercely competitive world of consumer product sales, it is one more battleground where the right image might give you an edge.
Of course, you could continue to ignore the directives, to assume that the market will move to lead-free components with or without your input and to make as few concessions to WEEE- and ROHS-compliant design styles as possible. After all, you might ask, how will these directives be policed? The EMC directive, now with us for some years, set a precedent when it was largely turned over to self-regulation. I have few doubts that I could walk into another store and find products on open sale that come nowhere near meeting that set of regulations. However, doing nothing on the grounds that you won't be found out is a hardly commendable course of action, and it probably isn't viable this time around.
Perhaps no one is going to drill into your pc board to determine whether you've used the right flame retardants or whether the solder is all lead-free, but the market will resolve most of those issues for you. The more visible aspects of product-life-cycle management, providing a means of recycling your creations at the end of their lives and designing products that fit in with those provisions, may present both the biggest challenges and the greatest opportunities. Welcome to 2004; 2006 is coming!
Contact me at gprophet@reedbusiness.com.
