To date across Europe, we send 90% of all waste electrical and electronic equipment into landfill, filling these sites and wasting valuable resources that could be re-used instead. The above directives are intended to change this practice and ensure that ALL new equipment is manufactured without the inclusion of the specified 6 banned hazardous materials*, as these will be removed under the Restriction of Hazardous Substances directive, thus ensuring that we do not pollute the ground, or place individuals at risk from handling materials as products are recycled in future.

The Waste Electrical Electronic Equipment directive follows on from this and will ensure that electrical products are recycled and/or re-used in the supply chain once they have reached the end of their life. It is hoped that in the longer term, manufacturers will move away from the existing practice of discarding and replacing items as they fail or become outdated and instead design products to be repaired or upgraded, so that they can continue to serve the user.

Both directives will have a profound effect on the “Producers” of electrical products within the EEC, (and outside if manufacturers wish to continue selling their products to the European market). Some of these effects are already being felt as the need to provide information about components parts and products place additional administrative burdens on Producers and Retailers who need to ensure that the products supplied by them will comply with the directive´s requirements. In addition, the Producers will have to allocate additional funds from their operational budgets in order to finance the registration to a compliance scheme and the “Take-Back” obligation that they will be set under the WEEE directive.

As a result, of the Producer´s obligation, the Manufacturers and Distributors of components and materials will need to ensure that the parts that they supply meet the directive´s requirements.

Rapid is working closely with other members of the AFDEC oganisation and doing everything it can to meet these directives. We will obtain and hold information from our suppliers about the raw materials contained within the parts that they make and sell, so that this can in turn be passed on to the end user. Ultimately, this information will be used to confirm any product´s RoHS status to the legislation´s enforcement body, the National Weights and Measures Laboratory.

It should be noted at this point, that the legislation does not ban the sale of non-compliant parts, what it does is prohibit the use of non-compliant parts in new equipment sold after July 1st 2006. Therefore, if you are not manufacturing electrical products for sale, you can continue to use non-RoHS compliant parts and materials. (Though of course in time, it is more than likely that all products will become compliant by default as manufacturers will not want to run parallel production lines of compliant and non-compliant parts).

Many other countries around the world have also initiated similar plans to Europe´s RoHS and WEEE directives and it is anticipated that ultimately, hazardous substances will be removed from the supply chain and product recycling will have a global impact. From little acorns, mighty oaks will grow!

* Except for some exceptions, refer to Schedule 2 of the RoHS directive.