Toxics Restrictions Proposed in New EPEAT Rules for TVs

The upcoming EPEAT standards for TVs and imaging equipment will have multiple “reporting requirements and restrictions” for toxics but they will not address nano materials, according to an EPEAT official. Environmental groups like the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, who have launched a campaign to get electronics makers to reveal their use of nano materials in their products, say they faced pushback from manufacturers when they tried to get that done through EPEAT (CED Jan 24 p3). EPEAT now covers computers and display and is expected to finalize standards for TVs and imaging gear this year.

Nano materials would have been classified as “new materials” because of their not figuring in the RoHS and other lists, Wayne Rifer, EPEAT director of standards and product verification, told us. “There was considerable discussion amongst the stakeholders about including new materials in the standards [and] several different definitions were proposed,” he said. But it became “very difficult to define a criterion that would be verifiable because of the definition problem.” The standards group decided that new materials like nano would be “an area for some real research and development” in the update of the computer standards being taken up later this year, Rifer said.

Criteria in the coming TV and imaging equipment standards include reporting toxic substances in products and restricting certain substances, Rifer said. “Was there pushback from manufacturers? You bet there was,” he said. “And most of what we achieved was a compromise.” The “optional” criteria include those dealing with “public disclosure of supply chain toxics” and “product life cycle and public disclosure of analyses,” he said. A requirement in the standards would be for manufacturers to report to recyclers about “materials and components with hazardous materials” and their “special handling needs,” he said. And one optional criterion in the TV standard seeks “identification of presence and location of materials and components with certain nonstandard or new materials,” he told us by email.

Although the environmental groups didn’t get “everything they wanted,” the proposed criteria “definitely set the industry on notice that these reporting requirements are coming,” Rifer said. “Predictably some of what is optional today will become required when the standard is updated in 3-5 years,” Rifer said. The industry isn’t prepared now to “make that full disclosure of chemicals in products,” he said: “They simply do not know and cannot find out.” Part of the reason is that the massive Asian supply chain, which is “pretty primitive as far as environmental is concerned, is not set up to report that data.” For the most part, they don’t know what substances are in the components they make, he said. “It will take years to get it.” But changes are happening and EPEAT is now training suppliers in Asia, he said.