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What does green mean?
Standards would assist the channel's compliance efforts
By Barbara Jorgensen, Contributing Writer -- EDN, 10/15/2008
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Wading through the alphabet soup associated with environmental compliance—RoHS, REACH, WEEE and EuP (See Where to Go for Green chart, page 12) —is daunting for many companies. Industry experts say just one or two words would go a long way toward making environmental compliance more user-friendly.
Those words are "standards" and "simplify." "Standards would be very helpful," says Arrow Electronics President, Global Alliance and Supply Chain, Brian McNally. "My advice is to keep it simple," says Barney Martin, vice president for industry practices for the National Electronics Distributors Association (NEDA).
No standards body, such as the International Standards Organization (ISO), oversees global environmental mandates. Therefore, electronics manufacturers affected by the European Union's Restriction on Hazardous Substances (RoHS) or China's Administrative Measure on the Control of Pollution Caused by Electronic Information Products ("China RoHS") must demonstrate compliance to each mandate separately. Moreover, even within the EU, countries such as Norway and Switzerland are looking at enacting their own environmental laws that reach beyond RoHS.
"There are no standards for what 'green' is," says Ken Stanvick, principal with consultancy Design Chain Associates (DCA).
How standards help
Standards could help the compliance effort in a number of ways. Within the electronics supply chain, standardizing something like component part numbers would make keeping track of compliant and noncompliant parts much easier. Virtually all component makers have developed RoHS-compliant parts, but in some cases, the same part number is used to identify both compliant and noncompliant versions. (Noncompliant parts are still in demand because certain segments of the electronics industry are exempt from RoHS.) Developing two new part numbers, suppliers say, is unwieldy and confusing—customers are familiar with the old part numbers. Instead, suppliers use a symbol denoting an eco-friendly part.
The problem is distributors need to distinguish one part from the other for a number of reasons. Compliant and noncompliant parts cannot be stored together, for example. Compliant parts require solders with high melting points and heat may damage some components. Shipping a compliant part for use in a noncompliant application can cause failure in an end-product. However, commonly-used IT systems and software don't have the technology to recognize a symbol to differentiate a product: most systems are alpha-numeric.
Distributors have worked their way around this by developing internal part numbering systems that take supplier parts, rename them for internal use, and then restore the original part number for customer-shipping purposes. Distributors say this has been a difficult but effective solution to the part-numbering dilemma.
Topping the industry's wish list would be a coordinated, worldwide environmental effort that would bring together the disparate elements of the country-by-country laws. No one sees this as a possibility in the near future. Even within a single mandate—such as the EU's RoHS—conflicts exist. "As RoHS is a single market directive (Article 95) the scope is supposed to be the same in all member states but unfortunately, there are variations," explains Gary Nevison, director of legislation and environmental affairs for Newark and Farnell, on the company's Website. "Holland for example regards car radios sold to users as being in scope, contrary to the published guidance. Equipment such as electric heaters and air conditioning that is bolted to walls is regarded as being in scope, by some EU states but outside scope in others. The status of large industrial machines is also unclear, regarded by some as large-scale stationary industrial tools (out of scope) and by others simply as tools and so in scope."
One of the ways Avnet keeps on top of compliance developments is by participating in EU and individual country forums. "Both in terms of Avnet and as part of NEDA we have engaged in work groups that are developing things like common [component] traceability rules," says Georg Steinberger, vice president of communications for Avnet Electronics Marketing EMEA and director of Avnet's green efforts. "We actively work with customers and industry associations to make sure the requirements are in sync with our business and that we can be an influence on the [rules] that are coming to us."
Still, the supply chain is facing a situation in which a component may be environmentally compliant in the UK but the same component is not compliant in China, says NEDA's Martin.
Keeping it simple
It's easy to get caught up in all the rules and regulations associated with the environment, experts acknowledge, and sometimes the channel overlooks one thing: Distributors are not directly responsible for a product's environmental compliance. "In terms of RoHS, at least, the law really affects the producer of the cell phone, the Wii, etc.," says NEDA's Martin. "They have to demonstrate to the enforcement agencies that their product meets the RoHS restrictions. There are not a lot of RoHS compliance issues in the actual supply chain."
Obviously, the channel plays a big role in terms of the sheer volume of products it ships. But distributors are really a conduit for the compliance information that needs to pass from the supplier to the end-customer. Some distributors capture and aggregate suppliers' compliance information in their databases; others direct customers to the supplier. "From the distributor point of view, [their responsibility] is to get an answer for the customer on a component's RoHS status. That can be accomplished by directing the customer to the supplier Website," says Martin.
"That said," Martin adds, "in order for a customer to demonstrate compliance, they have to know what's in the product. So component-level information is vital."
For electronics distributors, all of this boils down to one thing: Customer service. "Distributors have to make sure their customer is getting the part they need," Martin says. "To do that, they have to be able to answer questions or know where to direct the customer for answers."
And that—simply—may be enough to assist customers in their compliance efforts. "Tracking eco-legislation is a huge challenge and many [manufacturing] companies don't have the time to set up a system for this purpose," says DCA's Stanvick. Global distributors, in particular, do have such systems. "There is no consistent methodology for defining green and that is a [customer] need that has to be satisfied," he concludes.
