ROHS, the Directive to limit or rather ban the usage of dangerous substances in electrical and electronic equipments manufacturing, was put-forth by the European Union in February 2003. Five years after the launch of RoHS 1, EU has now adopted the new RoHS Directive or RoHS 2, with more rigid rules to put an end to the usage of toxic substances in electrical & electronic products manufacturing industry. However, there are a lot of companies and factories out there, who are not aware of the new RoHS 2 Directive.
According to environmental compliance experts, RoHS 2 Directive will soon create a major impact on electronic industry, and electronic products manufacturing companies. RoHS 2 Directive was initially published in the Official Journal of EU, on July 1st, 2011, and entered in to force on July 21st 2011. According to EU & environmental compliance experts out there, RoHS 2 Directive will replace RoHS 1 on January 3rd, 2013. Hence electronic products manufacturing companies should have a comprehensive idea about the new RoHS Directive rules and regulations
RoHS 2 covers a wide range of products including small & large household appliances, IT & telecommunication, consumer equipments, lighting equipments, electric and electronic tools, and medical devices. But RoHS 2 doesn’t apply to certain products like military equipments, space equipments, equipments which are designed and manufactured to form the part of equipments which are not within the scope, large scale industry tools, large scale fixed installations, various means of transport, non-road mobile machines, active implantable medical devices, and photovoltaic panels. Therefore electronic products manufacturing companies should have a very clear idea about product categories of EU RoHS.
RoHS 1 was brought into force to curb or rather completely ban the usage of 6 major hazardous materials – lead, mercury, cadmium, hexavalent chromium, polybrominated biphenyl, and polybrominated diphenyl ethers. According to the reports of EU, these chemicals are highly toxic to humans and extremely harmful to the environment too. RoHS 2 also restricts the usage of all the above mentioned chemicals, with the help of more rigid rules and regulations. Electrical and electronic products companies in the EU are legally bound to obey the rules of EUL legislation. This also applies to the companies that export electrical and electronic products to any of the countries in the EU.
Unawareness of these rules will never be considered as a viable excuse, and therefore it is very important to learn about RoHS , to ensure that your products are fully RoHS compliant. To know about the rules and regulations of EU, companies can contact environmental compliance experts like Enventure Technology Services. We help companies comply to RoHS and its different country flavours, by providing them with a comprehensive audit report about their products, and the materials that they use in the Bills of Materials during product manufacturing. Our experts will also provide environmental compliance consulting services, bill of material assessment, product conversion, and other required solutions to help companies understand and comply with the EU directives.
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