Mandatory Hardware Recycling Coming To US?

BDPrime writes, "A U.S. congressional caucus has met twice to discuss proposing national legislation that would make hardware manufacturers responsible for taking back their own stuff, similar to what Europe implemented with WEEE (PDF). The story quotes David Douglas, one of Sun's eco-evangelists, reflecting on the alternative: 'If we were having to deal with local regulations and local disposition facilities in every state, to deal with every state's nuanced costs, that would clearly involve cost to our basic equipment.'" It's early days for this movement; the buzzword to watch here is "E-waste."

It's already here

[dave562]

One of my clients is in the waste management industry and they are already dealing with regulations from the State of California that prevents them from accepting televisions, CRTs or flat panel displays. The governator passed legislation that requires special disposal of the afforementioned products and of course, that disposal requires a fee that the consumer must pay.

Re:Why stop there?

[fructose]

You do realize that over 90% of the steel in cars and at least 25% of appliances (fridges, washers/dryers) comes from recycled steel? More info here: http://www.recycle-steel.org/ [recycle-steel.org]

Re:Does This Apply To Foreign Manufacturers?

[witte]

If foreign manufacturers want to sell it on the EU market, they have to accept the EU rules of business.
(You can substitute "EU" with "US" or "South Africa" or any other nation.)
They could always choose to not do business... but that's unlikely :-)

This is bad news...

[Anonymous Coward]

I manage the manufacturing floor for a small electronics company. We have been dealing with the European WEEE directive for some time now, and it is fairly innocuous. In fact, the only change we needed to make was to put a sticker of a garbage can with an X over it on the product. It was the responsibility of the distributor to handle the WEEE stuff.

Now, while the WEEE is innocuous, it was just the tip of the iceburg. What followed it is not. If you haven't heard about RoHS, then look it up on Wikipedia. It mandates that we cannot use a number of chemicals including lead and cadmium. Ok, you're thinking to yourself, this is a good thing, right? Well my friend, you are sadly mistaken. Cadmium is the only metal that is effective in plating relay contacts. If you use any other metal, the contacts will fuse in a few cycles, rendering the relay unusable, as well as the equipment using it. Now what about lead? For those of you not "in the know", for the past 80 years or so, all electrical connections have been made with a solder made from 60% tin, and 40% lead. This solder is used because it is a great conductor, has a low melting point, is stable, and is ductile. The replacement for leaded solder is also a good conductor, has a very high melting point, is prone to spontaneous growths of "tin whiskers", and is quite brittle. Let's take each thing one-at-a-time.
1. Good conductivity. This is absolutely necessary when forming an electrical connection. In order to make a good connection, the surfaces to be soldered need to be free of contaminates, and the joint must be shielded from oxygen while the joint is formed. This is what flux is used for. Because of the higher melting temperature of lead-free solder, the flux we use must be much stronger. This has caused 2 lost-time health concerns at my company alone.
2. Melting point. When you have a high melting point for the solder, all of the components on the PCB are subjected to much higher temperatures during the flow-soldering process. About 400c. This adds great stress to the components, and negatively effects their lifespan. Also, the environmental impact of running thousands of flow ovens, and millions of irons at double the temperature cannot be overlooked.
3. Stability in the compound is obviously necessary. The lead-free options are prone to formation of tin crystals that take the form of a filament, or "whisker". These whiskers can grow out, and make contact with an adjacent component, trace, or lead, thereby creating a short circuit. This has already caused many reliability concerns, and was implicated in a nuclear reactor mishap at a civilian reactor.
4. Having a ductile nature is also important. As heat causes components to expand, and operation creates vibration, you need to have a joint that can flex a little bit. Lead free solders are not ductile, and as a result, it is estimated that you will only get about a 5 year life out of any product made with the lead-free solder.

Now for the ecological impact. The EPA did a large study on the impact of switching to lead-free solders. It was determined that there would be a huge negative impact by switching. For example, the non-renewable resource (NNR) load on making a pound of lead-free solder is about 400 pounds greater than when making a pound of leaded solder.

So, as you're sitting at your computer somewhere in the US, you're thinking "I'm glad I don't need to use the unleaded stuff..." well, you're wrong. Most of the new electronic gizmos you are buying are made from lead-free solder. It is simply impractical to run dual lines for manufacturing. So this bit of legislation that the EU enacted in isolation is going to screw you big time.

Welcome to the future of electronics.