January 9th, 2007
Folks,
Loyal reader Carl sends this newsclip:
RoHS-Like Federal Legislation
Rep. Hilda Solis (D-CA), slated to take over the top spot in the House Energy & Commerce Subcommittee on Environment and Hazardous Materials, has already promoted federal legislation that mirrors parts of California's Electronic Waste Recycling Act (California Restriction on Hazardous Substances-RoHS), which as of January 1, 2007, will ban the sale of some electronic devices that contain certain hazardous substances.
Currently Minnesota, Maine, Maryland, New Jersey, Tennessee, Vermont, Washington, and Wisconsin have similar RoHS-like legislation enacted. The number of states considering similar legislation will expand in the next few years creating enormous costs for companies that will have to comply with these requirements.
Democrats are likely to consider a federal RoHS bill to address the core concerns causing this proliferation of state bills the prohibition of materials thought to be harmful to people and the environment. A number of dangers exist, such as whether any proposed federal legislation would:
Have a strong basis in science or merely copy what was done in California and the EU;
Mirror or exceed the current California and EU RoHS restrictions;
Preempt existing state RoHS laws or allow the states to legislate on top of any proposed federal requirements; or
Create mandatory take-back requirements or impose advanced recovery fees for waste electronics.
For additional information contact Michaela Muranova, Director, Trade & Environmental Policy, at 202.682.4445.
The link to this article is here
Cheers,
Dr. Ron
Camille Good:
Dear Dr. Ron,
I am of mixed feelings regarding a nationwide RoHS-like law.
On the one hand, yes, it would be much nicer to have one law to deal with, instead of the 50+ we would have if each U.S. state and non-state district or area write their own RoHS equivalents.
However, the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states "powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people".
It is possible that a federal RoHS-like law could be written on the grounds of regulating inter-state commerce. It is also possible (and I think likely) that such a law will be caught between competing pressures from environmentalist groups and manufacturing groups, and will wind up being as dense & unintelligible as any other bit of recent federal law.
And in general I think it is a bad idea to advocate action by the federal government whenever two or more states take different approaches to the same topic.
So, as I said before, I am of mixed feelings regarding a U.S. Federal RoHS-like law. I dislike RoHS and WEEE in general, as they both have lofty ideals and poor implementation of those ideals, and I think a U.S. RoHS equivalent on a federal level could present an equal amount of needless disruption and paperwork. I hope the U.S. federal government keeps their hands out of this mess until further results are seen from Europe and California.
Don Ballard:
Soon, very few manufacturers will be carrying two product lines: 1) RoHS compliant and 2) non-RoHS compliant. I see this like I saw EMC requirements ten plus years ago......people are going to have to make and test devices to the most difficult link in the compliance chain. In other words, it won't be that big of a stretch to comply with a domestic RoHS directive since most are already complying with an EU or other area directive (like they did to the European EMC directives in 1995). Now that will be true if our domestic law parallel's the EU law. If they change it here or make it more stringent, all bets are off.
Fern Abrams:
Dr. Lasky
You should check your sources instead of just repeating bad information. Minnesota, Maine, Maryland, New Jersey, Tennessee, Vermont, Washington, and Wisconsin do not have RoHS-like legislation enacted. While they had legeslative bills debated last year, there is a big difference between bills and laws.