“Sixteen Tons” was a hit song in the ’50s about the plight of coal miners. The left/right reference was to “one fist of iron and one of steel.” Nearly five years since the European Union passed the Restrictions on Hazardous Substance (RoHS) Directive, the lyrics seem appropriate to the plight of electronics companies being hit with a barrage of toxicity-related requirements.

One fist is “government:” Argentina, Australia, Brazil, China, Japan, Korea and Switzerland - and individual states like California - are just some of the localities implementing toxicity directives. Some of them address many more substances than EU RoHS. For example, Canada will restrict several hundred substances. The EU’s Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals Regulation (REACH) Directive, which took effect June 1, 2007, will eventually restrict up to 1,500 substances.

The other fist is “customer:” IBM, Nokia, Philips, Sony — every very large company that I’m aware of has its own substance list.

What’s going on?

In 1930, one million tons of chemicals were produced worldwide. Today, the figure is 400 million tons. Some of these chemicals pollute our air, water and soil; others impact our brains, kidneys and livers. A recent study (pdf) monetized environmentally attributable toxicity costs in regard to disease and disability for several states. For example, in Washington, the figure amounts to about 1 percent of the state’s economy.

Will it end? No, a threshold has been crossed.

What to do? Recognize that our industry is midway through a 30-year macro-shift that rivals the adoption of Total Quality Management practices in the 1980s and will shortly be an equally critical condition of doing business.

The biggest obstacle to successfully navigating this macro-shift is not money, time or the right software, but the “do-the-minimum” mindset that says: “We can skate by. Settle for Y/N certificates. Disregard all those directives. And pray our customers never require us to know the amount of every substance in our products.”

Instead, take a lesson from companies, including several GoodBye Chain Group customers, that have had an “aha” moment: The requirements are not about any individual substance; they are about broader materials of concern in their products. They are about treating substance data with the same precision as financial data. They are about reducing liability as well as toxins. And they are about innovative designs that generate employee pride as well as corporate revenue.

Posted by Harvey Stone, October 25th, 2007

Filed to Environment

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