Staying Ahead of the RoHS Game
Andrew Stockton, Commercial Director Mita (UK), discuses the implications of complying with the RoHS Directive and why doing so, despite not being mandatory for cable management products, will benefit everyone.
Every product has an impact on the environment – while it is being made, while it is being used and after it has been disposed of. At each stage, it uses up scarce natural resources, consumes energy from potentially polluting processes or can cause discharges of hazardous waste into air, water or landfill.
It is no longer acceptable to make products considering only their quality and the final cost to the consumer. Responsible manufacturers must be as concerned about the environment as they are about their production methods, the way they treat their employees, their impact on the communities where they operate and governmental or legislative regulations.
To ensure manufacturers play their part in protecting the environment, the European Union has published the RoHS Directive (2002/95/EC), which restricts the use of certain substances (including additives in specific maximum concentrations) in some electrical and electronic equipment. Those substances include the heavy metals lead, cadmium, mercury and a number of other elements limited to particular products, primarily flame retardants in plastics.
The requirements of the Directive came into force in July 2006, when the Restriction of the Use of Certain Hazardous Substances in Electrical and Electronic Equipment Regulations implemented the Directive in the UK. Many manufacturers of electrical equipment have already eliminated substances that pose a risk to human health and the environment from their products. Well before that date, Schneider Electric (UK) and its subsidiary companies had progressively removed RoHS substances from all their low-voltage products destined for the European Union or for unknown destinations.
What about electrical installation products? Many, including cable management systems, do not specifically require electricity to fulfil their basic functions, so they are not covered by the RoHS Directive. In the words of the Directive, it covers equipment “which is dependent on electric current or electromagnetic fields in order to work properly and equipment for the generation, transfer and measurement of such currents and fields”.
In spite of this Mita has decided that all its cable management products will nevertheless comply with the Directive, irrespective of legislative requirements. Over the past two years, in line with our accreditation to the ISO 14001 environmental standard, we have removed lead from all our plastic extrusions and moulded components.
Lead-based compounds are incorporated into PVC to act as lubricants and stabilisers during extrusion and moulding operations. They have been replaced in our manufacturing process by calcium-zinc compounds. We worked for over a year with our principal polymer suppliers to develop new materials that were lead-free but precisely matched the characteristics of our original materials, both during manufacturing and in the finished product. As a result, the qualities of the lead-free products are indistinguishable from older ones, which may contain lead compounds, sharing the same specification, mechanical strength and flexibility.
The core of our plastics range is already produced using original virgin compound, and any recycled material used in future will therefore be based on the newer lead-free materials.
And Mita’s effort to comply with RoHS goes further. Over the past two years, we have worked to ensure that every one of our hundred or so suppliers is RoHS material compliant. No packaging, metal plates, screws or other components will contain restricted substances.
Why invest so much time, effort and development cost in this process? Whilst there is no specific regulatory requirement at this time to remove lead-based stabilisers from cable trunking or conduit, there are clear indications that many public bodies such as local authorities, government departments and environmentally conscious companies and specifiers prefer to use more environmentally friendly materials, helping them comply with their own ‘green’ policies. It is only a matter of time before these same concerns become common among all users of our cable management products.
Mita is part of Schneider Electric (UK), which manufactures a host of electrical installation products that fall within the scope of RoHS. By ensuring that our cable management products meet the demands of the Directive, Schneider Electric can offer a complete package that is RoHS compliant.
We believe this makes Schneider Electric unique in that it can supply all the products for a large electrical installation project – and all will meet the demands of RoHS. This will undoubtedly become an important part of the tendering process in future as more public and private organisations seek accreditation to the ISO 14001 environmental standard.
Of course, there are still many of the older electrical products on distributors’ shelves, including those that are covered by the RoHS legislation, and it is perfectly acceptable to stock and sell them as long as they were put on the market in Europe before July 2006. It remains the responsibility of the manufacturer, supplier or importer to ensure that any applicable electrical products that have entered the supply chain since July 2006 comply with the requirements of the Directive and the Regulations that implement it in the UK.
Distributors do not, however, have to return or exchange cable management products, so there are still large quantities of lead-based plastics in circulation and there will be for some time. We have worked hard to ensure that the changeover to lead-free cable management products within the Distributors stock takes place smoothly.
How can contractors and specifiers be sure that cable trunking or conduit is free of restricted substances? This can be difficult because a CE Mark indicates only that a product complies with relevant European Safety Directives, and cable management products remain outside the scope of the RoHS Directive.
As a result, if you are concerned that the cable management or other products you specify and install might contain restricted substances, you are advised to contact the manufacturer direct for information, and you are entitled to ask the question ‘Does your product comply with the spirit of RoHS?’
Why should you go to the trouble of checking the environmental credentials of the cable management products that you use on a project? Looking to the future, Some US states – particularly California, China, Japan and most of the Asia-Pacific Rim, are ready to follow the European Union’s lead and are enacting their own regulations to restrict and in some case ban outright the use of hazardous substances in electrical products. Who knows what further changes may be around the corner?
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