Mark Downs and Steve Andrews of the UK Department of Trade and Industry, along with Jennifer Guhl, Director of International Policy at AeA and Ken Rivlin of Allen & Overy, spent two days in the Bay Area educating local companies about the newly enacted Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive and the Restrictions on the Use of Certain Hazardous Substances in Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive, as well as gaining knowledge about specific challenges these companies are facing.

Monday, February 23  the team visited Intel Corporation for an overview on lead-free solder, then traveled to Roseville for a tour of Hewlett-Packard Company's electronic recycling plant.

The main event of the tour took place the morning of February 24 at Sun Microsystem's Santa Clara Campus in the historic Agnews Auditorium. Over 80 attendees listened attentively as the presenters covered the issues through every stage in the line of creation of products. San Francisco UK Consul General Martin Uden began the session by emphasizing the importance of EU Directives in a market of over 300 million consumers, rather than adhering to individual laws in every European country.

Ken Rivlin of Allen & Overy presented the applications of the WEE and RoHS Directives throughout the product life cycle, and where the relevant issues presented in those Derivatives affect Bay Area companies. WEEE is the Directive for electronics waste that covers both past and future disposal of electronics items. RoHS is the Directive that covers the materials used in the manufacturing of future electronics items. Even if the product is only a component, all manufactures must comply to have their components included in EU- bound products.

Mark Downs, Head of Recycling Policy for the UK Department of Trade and Industry, placed the discussion in context of the WEEE Directives by describing the process in which waste electronic materials are to be recycled - whether they are taken to a retailer or a designated site by the consumer, the responsibilities of each manufacturing company to gather and recycle the materials, and the steps the manufacturer must take to ensure that those products have been fully recycled.

Steve Andrews, also of the UK Department of Trade and Industry, covered the issues surrounding RoHS. While the Directive has already been issued, an advisory group is being put together to examine the exemptions requested by manufacturers to determine how the criteria for limited use of restricted substances should be evaluated. For example, should the lead used in solder on a computer motherboard be measured at the chip level or as a percentage of the entire motherboard? These issues are still being worked out. 

AeA's role with these Directives is to act as an advisor to the committees to give them more information about what AeA's member companies need, as well as educating those companies about the regulations and their need to comply. Jennifer Guhl, Director of International Policy at AeA, provided an overview of AeA's role in these areas, as well as some insight into similar regulations under consideration in China and in California. She was followed by Marie Rader, Gulab Sharma, and David Towne of Sun Microsystems for an overview of how Sun is responding to these new regulations.

An afternoon session was held at Solectron in Fremont, providing a roundtable discussion of the issues as they relate to individual companies, which was followed by a tour of Solectron's lead-free manufacturing facility. Here, Jennifer Guhl and Mark Downs are prepared to view the facility in static-free smocks.

To view the presentations at the Sun event please click below:

DTI Presentation, Allen & Overy Presentation, AeA Presentation, and Sun Presentations - Marie Rader, Gulab Sharma, and David Towne.

The multi-city tour began in Edison, NJ on February 19 and continues with events and briefing hosted by AeA in:

• Redmond, WA on February 25, 2004
• Schaumberg, IL on February 26, 2004

This page was last updated on 03/09/04.  
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