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 Where greener may be smarter
Compared with Europe, it seems the United States is a big country, full of open spaces. Sometimes there seems to be an attitude that thereýs plenty of room for landfill sites to dispose of the waste generated by such an affluent country. In other words, in the United States, conspicuous consumption and waste are not really a problem.
Attitudes are a little different in Europe and are moving towards the ecologically aware or "green" end of the spectrum at a rate of knots. So those open spaces, together with the historical resistance of U.S. citizens to government intervention, could yet trip up U.S. companies when it comes to selling their products into Europe. "How come?" you ask. I am talking about a potential legal responsibility for the environmentally friendly recycling of electronic equipment sold in Europe. Itýs a responsibility that seems set to fall on the designers and manufacturers of the equipment, as well as on the last owner who wants to dispose of it. The European Union is in the middle of a round of governmental discussions aimed at creating a draft European directive on waste disposal by August of this year. The principle of producer responsibility for equipment end-of-life costs has achieved some currency here in Europe. Itýs also well established that waste disposal by incineration and at landfill sites are the least desirable solutions to equipment end-of-life problems. The preferred solution is recycling through various routes. So whatýs expected in Europe is some combination of laws, taxes and tax breaks intended to inhibit the throw-away society in favor of recyclable products and take-back schemes. No one yet knows what form these European laws will take, and they are being fiercely debated because many of the proposals are fraught with impracticalities. But the signs are clear that, in the long term, equipment makers should be prepared to design for disassembly and recycling of constituent parts. One organization leading the debate in the United Kingdom is the Industry Council for Electronics Equipment Recycling (ICER), whose Web site is due to go live any day now at http://www.icer.org.uk. How much would it cost your company to redesign equipment so that it opened up easily and so that plastics and metals could be easily recycled? How do you measure equipment recyclability? How would it effect your company if you had to take back old equipment from your European customers every time you shipped them new equipment? How would it effect the European market if a tax was levied on equipment to pay for waste disposal? ICER canýt yet answer those questions, but one thing seems certain: There will be a European draft directive this year. There may still be a couple of years before the directive is adopted by the European Union, and then individual countries will have a further two years to pass laws implementing a directive. So neither laws nor taxes are likely to be imposed before 2001 or 2002. But before you dismiss design-for-recycling as something which can be put off, think about the introduction of European legislation on electromagnetic compatibility. Despite more than 10 years of propaganda and preparation which spelled out how electronic equipment sold in Europe would have to be certified to meet EMC regulations, many U.S. companies were caught short when the law finally kicked in across the EU a couple of years back. So maybe now is the time to start thinking about design-for-recycling. Now is certainly the time to influence the debate in Europe.
Peter Clarke, based in London, is European Correspondent forEE Times .
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