EU – Commission Announces Circular Economy Package

The European Commission announced on December 2, 2015 that it is adopting an ambitious new Circular Economy Package. The Commission press release listed the key actions to be carried out under the current Commission’s mandate. Action items that are relevant to the EEE industry include:

  • Funding of over €650 million under Horizon 2020 and €5.5 billion under the structural funds;
  • Development of quality standards for secondary raw materials to increase the confidence of operators in the single market;
  • Measures in the Ecodesign working plan for 2015-2017 to promote reparability, durability and recyclability of products, in addition to energy efficiency;
  • A strategy on plastics in the circular economy, addressing issues of recyclability, biodegradability, the presence of hazardous substances in plastics, and the Sustainable Development Goals target for significantly reducing marine litter;

The broad range of actions making up the Commission’s circular economy package may have significant impact on the EEE industry and manufacturers over the upcoming decade. Impacts may include:

  • Ecodesign implementing measures that include design for reuse and recycling requirements in addition to the traditional energy efficiency requirements.
  • Requirements to make repair information available
  • Emphasis on implementing an environmental management system
  • Increased scrutiny of green claims
  • Product environmental footprint to measure and communicate environmental information
  • Increased Green Public Procurement (GPP)
  • Increased use of recycled plastics and recycled criterial materials
  • Development of quality standards for secondary raw materials
  • Increased exchange of information between manufacturers and recyclers

IEC62474 – Declarable Substances List Updated to Version D10.00

Version D10.00 of the IEC 62474 Declarable Substance List (DSL) and the Reference Substance List (RSL) were released on December 17, 2015. The substance lists are used globally by EEE manufacturers, suppliers, and IT solution providers as a common list of substances and substance groups that are declared throughout the supply chain.

The update includes:

  • four of five substances from the December 17, 2015 SVHC additions to the EU REACH Candidate List and
  • Changes in the reporting threshold of the four phthalate substances that were added to the EU RoHS Directive earlier this year.

The IEC 62474 data exchange format (XML schema and developer’s table) was not updated during this maintenance cycle. The database update is the final step in maintenance cycle (MC-2015-02) which was started in September 2015.

A detailed summary of the changes is provided on our IEC 62474 blog.

 

DigitalEurope Proposes PFOA Exemption for Spare Parts

In response to the anticipated restriction of PFOA, the DigitalEurope industry group is proposing an exemption for spare parts across all industries.

Earlier in 2015, ECHA’s Socio-Economic Analysis Committee (SEAC) recommended a restriction on perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), its salts and PFOA-related substances due to the substances’ persistence, bioaccumulation and toxic (PBT) properties. As part of the recommendation, SEAC noted that a car spare parts exemption proposed by the German Association of Car Manufacturers and the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA) is justified. DigitalEurope is proposing for an exemption for other industries, arguing that the rationale and justification is the same for EEE products as it is for automotive.

ECHA publishes new guidance on SVHC in articles

On December 17, 2015, ECHA published an update to the “Guidance on requirements for substances in articles”. The guidance document removes all of the interpretation and examples that contradict the September 2015 European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruling on the interpretation of article as it relates to calculating SVHC content above 0.1% (w/w).  The removed guidance includes any reference to calculating SVHC content based on the weight of an entire product as imported into the EU.  It now simply refers to “every article” without consideration for products that are manufactured from multiple articles. The following is a relevant excerpt from the new guidance document:

As concerns the obligations to communicate information on substances in articles in general (i.e. communication with recipients and consumers), please note that:

        • The substance concentration threshold of 0.1% (w/w) applies to every article supplied. This threshold applies to each article of an object made up of more than one article, which were joined or assembled together;
  • There is no tonnage trigger for these obligations (i.e. they also apply below 1 tonne per year);
  • The obligations also apply to articles which were produced or imported before the substance was included in the Candidate List and are supplied after the inclusion. Thus, the date of supply of the article is the relevant date;
  • The substance name to be communicated is the one appearing on the Candidate List for authorisation.

ECHA plans to provide, in 2016, a more thorough revision of the guidance including new examples that are aligned with the ECJ ruling.

For additional information on developing or assessing a REACH SVHC compliance program, contact ECD Compliance.

The new guidance document is available at http://echa.europa.eu/documents/10162/13632/articles_en.pdf

 

EU – REACH SVHCs added to Candidate List on December 17, 2015

The European Chemical Agency (ECHA), on December 17, 2015, added five new substances to the REACH SVHC Candidate List. The substances are listed in the table below. The Article 33 communication obligations specified in the REACH regulation (Regulation (EC) No 1907/2006) came into effect as soon as the SVHCs were added to the Candidate List,

SVHCs Added to the REACH Candidate List on December 17, 2015

Substance NameEC numberCAS number
1,3-propanesultone214-317-91120-71-4
2,4-di-tert-butyl-6-(5-chlorobenzotriazol-2-yl)phenol (UV-327)223-383-83864-99-1
2-(2H-benzotriazol-2-yl)-4-(tert-butyl)-6-(sec-butyl)phenol (UV-350)253-037-136437-37-3
Nitrobenzene202-716-098-95-3
Perfluorononan-1-oic-acid and its sodium and ammonium salts206-801-3375-95-1, 21049-39-8, 4149-60-4

The substance, Dicyclohexyl phthalate, had been proposed for addition to the Candidate List during this update, but was withdrawn by the dossier submitter (Sweden) and postponed to a later submission date. The substance hexamethylene diacrylate (hexane-1,6-diol diacrylate) had also been proposed for the REACH Candidate List but did not get added. The full Candidate List is available on the ECHA website.

For additional information on developing or assessing an effective REACH SVHC compliance program, contact ECD Compliance.

UAE – Update on Proposed RoHS Regulation

In a previous post, we discussed the United Arab Emirates (UAE) proposed RoHS regulation that they had notified to the WTO. The UAE RoHS proposal restricts the same 10 substance groups and at the same threshold level that are currently restricted in EU RoHS Directive. However, a transition period for the 4 phthalate substances is not provided for most EEE product categories, with the exception of medical devices and monitoring and control instruments which have until July 22, 2021 (same date as in the EU RoHS Directive).

The EU has submitted a response to the UAE WTO notification requesting clarification on this lack of a transition period for the phthalate substances in most product categories. The EU response also highlighted that the Annex III and Annex IV list of exemptions are not perfectly up to date with the EU RoHS Directive exemptions and raised some of the conformity assessment anomalies that we discussed in our September article.

Contact ECD Compliance, for services to assess your environmental product compliance requirements, keep you up to date on the impact to your products and markets and to implement compliance procedures.

IEC – International Standard on RoHS Technical Documentation Started

The IEC has started developing an International Standard on RoHS technical documentation. This will be an international version of the European standard, EN 50581:2012 “Technical documentation for the assessment of electrical and electronic products with respect to the restriction of hazardous substances” which was developed by the European CENELEC standards organization under mandate from the European Commission.

Technical documentation is one of the mandatory requirements imposed on manufacturers for compliance to the EU RoHS Directive and must be in place before an EEE product may be placed on the EU market (for foreign manufactured products, placing on the market usually occurs at the time of import). This EN 50581 standard is already in place for the EU RoHS Directive, but there is a strong desire to leverage this standard for use in other worldwide RoHS regulations. A new work item proposal to develop such a standard within the IEC was distributed earlier this year. The work item was broadly approved, including USA, Canada, China, Japan, Korea, and most EU countries.

The standard will be known as IEC 63000 and is being developed under IEC/TC111 (Environmental standardization for electrical and electronic products and systems). EN 50581 is expected to be leveraged heavily in the development of the International standard. The project team held its first meeting in Brussels on October 21-22, 2015 and will establish its first committee draft (CD) of the standard at an upcoming meeting on November 18, 2015.

Contact ECD Compliance, for additional information and services to develop or assess RoHS Technical Documentation or to stay up to date on International Environmental Standards.

USA – Court of Appeal Denies SEC Request on Conflict Minerals

On November 9, 2015, the US Court of Appeals refused the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Amnesty International requests for rehearing en banc of the court’s Aug. 18, 2015 decision in the Conflict Minerals Rule litigation. The request for rehearing is with regard to whether compelling companies to describe products as having “not been found to be DRC conflict free” violates the First Amendment.

However, the refusal by the Court doesn’t settle the issue and the saga continues. There are still several options available to the SEC and there is a lot of speculation underway as to what happens next. For example, the SEC could file an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court. We’ll need to let the dust settle and look to see what the SEC does next.

The ruling itself is very briefly, only really saying “the petitions be denied”.

Contact ECD Compliance, for additional information and services to assess your environmental product compliance requirements, keep you up to date on the impact to your products and markets and to implement compliance procedures.

EU – ECHA Announces New Data Available on Nanomaterials

The European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) published an article announcing that new data has become available from the OECD on nanomaterials. The data covers 11 commercially viable nanomaterials.

New data on 11 commercially viable nanomaterials was made available in June as part of a seven-year testing programme by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The information gives those companies who have registered or will register these nanomaterials in the EU, an opportunity to consider the data in their registration dossiers.

“If the information is relevant for the assessment of safe use of your substance, we encourage you to update your registration dossier to make sure the substances are used safely,” says Jenny Holmqvist, coordinator of nano activities in ECHA and Chair of the OECD steering group on the Testing and Assessment of Manufactured Nanomaterials.

“The OECD testing programme has made it possible to release an unprecedented volume of nano-specific data to the public,” says Jenny Holmqvist. The aim of the programme was firstly, to assess whether the existing test guidelines for substances need to be adapted to consider nano-specific issues, and secondly, to respond to the growing need for nano-specific data.

The 11 nanomaterials include:

  • fullerenes
  • single-walled carbon nanotubes
  • multi-walled carbon nanotubes
  • silver
  • gold
  • dendrimers
  • silicon dioxide
  • nanoclays
  • titanium dioxide
  • cerium dioxide
  • zinc oxide

Contact ECD Compliance, for additional information and services to assess your environmental product compliance requirements, keep you up to date on the impact to your products and markets and to implement compliance procedures.

 

IEC – The IEC 62321-7-1 Standard for testing Cr6+on Metal Coatings is Published

The standardized test method for determining if hexavalent chromium is present on metal coatings was revised and published on September 16, 2015. The boiling water extraction test has been revised and the spot test which was provided in the original IEC 62321:2008 standard has been removed because of its unreliability. IEC provides the following abstract of the standard:

IEC 62321-7-1:2015 describes a boiling water extraction procedure intended to provide a qualitative determination of the presence of hexavalent chromium (Cr(VI)) in colourless and coloured corrosion-protection coatings on metallic samples. In this procedure, when Cr(VI) in a sample is detected below the 0,10 g/cm2 LOQ (limit of quantification), the sample is considered to be negative for Cr(VI). Since Cr(VI) may not be uniformly distributed in the coating even within the same sample batch, a “grey zone” between 0,10 g/cm2 and 0,13 g/cm2 has been established as “inconclusive” to reduce inconsistent results due to unavoidable coating variations. In this case, additional testing may be necessary to confirm the presence of Cr(VI). When Cr(VI) is detected above 0,13 g/cm2, the sample is considered to be positive for the presence of Cr(VI) in the coating layer.

Contact ECD Compliance, for additional information and services to assess your environmental product compliance requirements, keep you up to date on the impact to your products and markets and to implement compliance procedures.