"We definitely feel that manufacturers have a responsibility, but we're not the only ones with a responsibility,"says Mark Small, vice president for corporate environmental affairs at Sony Electronics. "We believe it's a shared responsibility."
The electronics industry also has complained about a provision in the proposal requiring companies to take responsibility for "historical waste" - electronics that will become obsolete before the directive is put in place.
In fact, the European Parliament's Environment, Public Health and Consumer Policy Committee, which is expected to vote on the directives at the end of April, has drafted a proposal that would move the date when companies need to start paying for the collection and disposal of historical waste forward from five years to 30 months from when the directive goes into effect.
"If you've been in EU markets since 1960 and have to pick up everything on that and you did not anticipate it, it'll cut into bone," says Jennifer Guhl, director of international trade policy at AeA, an electronics industry group formerly known as the American Electronics Association.
Still, industry has more serious concerns about the RHS directive, which would ban the use of some substances used in electronics, including lead and mercury, but also cadmium, which is found in some printed circuit board components.
The European Commission's proposal calls for such chemicals to be eliminated from electronics by 2008, though a parliament proposal would move that up to 2006. Industry officials say this phase-out date was arbitrarily chosen without enough consideration as to whether companies can find alternatives. They also claim the proposed bans are not supported by strong scientific evidence.
Despite the tests that have been done with lead-free solders, industry officials argue there are no suitable substitutes yet for all uses of lead in electronics and no alternatives for mercury, which is used to increase energy efficiency and illumination in such products as laptop computers and flat-panel televisions.
"Everyone knows that lead has been associated with environmental problems and no one disputes that," Isaacs says. But he and others argue the EU should do a risk assessment on the use of lead in electronics before banning its use.
Lead has many uses in electronics, including soldering printed circuit boards and in the glass used in cathode ray tubes in personal computers. While substitutes have been identified for lead solders, industry officials argue that there is no guarantee these will be any safer for the environment.
"Even if it's feasible [to eliminate these substances], is the alternative to it better?" asks Wayne Balta, director of corporate environmental affairs at IBM. "No one really knows the answers."
The proposed directive does provide for some exceptions to these phase-outs, but it is unclear what uses would still be allowed. Industry plans to seek specific exemptions and more clarity on the process for gaining an exemption, says James Lovegrove, managing director at AeA's European office in Belgium.
