Introduction
Consumer electronics and computers contain a large amount of hazardous materials that has typically been disposed of with normal trash. Items such as lead used in monitor tubes and solder, mercury and other materials can leach out of the electronics in landfills and contaminate water supplies. This is led to a number of governments looking at ways to remove these materials through programs such as recycling.
In Europe they have gone even further than trying to prevent old electronics from ending up in land fills. They have also put together the RoHS Directive to mandate what electronics can be sold within the continent. This directive took affect on July 1st, 2006 and has broad implications for consumer electronics as a whole.
RoHS
RoHS officially stands for "restriction of the use of certain hazardous substances in electrical and electronic equipment". The purpose of the directive is to set certain levels of lead, cadmium, mercury, hexavalent chromium, polybrominated biphenyl (PBB) and polybrominated diphenyl ether (PBDE) in products. Any product that does not conform to the directive will be prohibited from sale within the countries of Europe that have agreed to the directive.
Implications
The RoHS Directive has a very ambitious time frame. All products must conform to the July 1st, 2006 date. This has forced many manufacturers to develop new techniques and materials to meet the guidelines. A good example of this has to do with solder that is used in all electronics to connect chips to circuit boards.
Solder typically used lead because of its lower melting point that made it very easy to work with. In order to reduce lead levels, new forms of solder must be used, but they all melt at higher temperatures. Manufacturers will need to get new manufacturing machines to operate at the higher temperatures. Similarly, the PCB circuit boards that the chips are installed on need to be redesigned to withstand the higher temperatures.
All of these changes are requiring investment in manufacturing and materials. Early on, much of these costs will likely be included into the price of the end product. Over time though, as the techniques and materials become more common, these costs will eventually drop. Consumers in the end will benefit from greener electronics.
What about the US?
Since most companies try and leverage mass production benefits to costs, it is likely that most manufacturers will just enable all techniques and procedures for their entire product lines to conform with the RoHS Directive. This means that the US market will likely start to see more and more products that contain fewer hazardous chemicals. Some of these products are already starting to making it to the US market.
However, the deadline is in such a short time frame that many of the early products that meet the RoHS guidelines will probably end up in European markets while the older non-conforming products will continue to ship to countries like the US.
Conclusions
Overall, the RoHS is a huge environmental gain. These gains will not be immediately seen in the market as there are still a large number of electronics produced with materials that will be replaced with conforming electronics. Only through additional recycling and proper disposal of these existing products will prevent the short term environmental gains. The RoHS is a more long term solution that looks to reduce these materials from entering the environment.
