...Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) producer compliance schemes Electrolink and Repic have reached agreement for the trading of WEEE evidence after months of dispute. The incident threatened to collapse the whole system. So what was the history of the conflict? And what happens now?... more...

...The Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Advisory Body (WAB) has now set up a work implementation plan that will assess the WEEE system. It comes at a time when the WEEE system will be approaching its first anniversary.... more...

...High-tech products make up four of the top 10 border seizures, while one of every 10 IT products is counterfeit. So says Design Chain Associates senior vice president Tom Valliere, in a Webinar today on counterfeiting in the electronics supply chain. Direct losses, he estimates, are currently more than $100 billion because of recalls, increased warranties and rework, to name a few. A $2 fake component costs $20 if detected at the manufacturing board level, and $200 or more at the field level, he said.... more...

...A surprising amount of people and companies are unaware that waste electronic and electrical equipment (WEEE) disposal firms are under no obligation to destroy data on old equipment, according to one industry bible.... more...

...USB Source new NAND technology uses less than 2% of the energy as conventional CD technology in transferring the same amount of data and in the comparative consumption of petrochemical in the manufacturing process. Eco-friendly is most often seen as picking up trash and recycling. What is often not thought about is the use of energy and how that adversely affects the environment.... more...

...Fulcrum, a gas infrastructure firm that is part of the National Grid Group, has recycled 2,000 items of technology under the European Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive (WEEE). The company said it had brought in Midex, a specialist in the processing and reuse of end of life IT and electrical goods, to collect and recycle PCs, laptops and printers. The collection was free of charge.... more...

...Kester will showcase EnviroMark 923 (EM923), a halogen-free, RoHS compliant, lead-free, no-clean solder paste, in booth 2C04 at the upcoming NEPCON China/EMT China 2008 exhibition and conference, scheduled to take place April 8-11, 2008 in Shanghai, PR China.... more...

..."We have now entered the second compliance period for the UK WEEE (Waste Electrical and Electronic equipment) Regulations and still some confusion remains amongst caterers and hoteliers," says Roger Miller, commercial manager of Veolia Environmental Services’ WEEE Producer Compliance Scheme.... more...

...Progress has been made on legislation to address New York's waste electrical and electronic equipment. This attracted a variety of feedback. New York's Mayor, Michael R. Bloomberg, commented: 'My Administration and the Council share the same goal of ensuring that thousands of tonnes of electronic waste are recycled instead of thrown into landfills, and we largely agree on how to achieve it. We are separating the issue into two bills so we can move forward on the broad areas where we have reached consensus, instead of letting our differences stop all progress. This is the best solution for our City and our environment.'... more...

...Concerns have been raised that while most large firms fully understand the Waste Electrical and Electronic equipment (WEEE) regulations, some small businesses are still unsure. According to Catersearch.com, many small to medium-sized businesses have not been given the same level of advice and information as their larger counterparts and many are still unaware of whether they are compliant or not.... more...

...The IT industry has been particularly profligate in a whole range of green areas, including power consumption, the use of toxic substances, over-packaging, air conditioning and product life cycle. This has brought severe criticism from many quarters. Increased consumer awareness and the RoHS and WEEE directives have forced a much needed reappraisal of the existing approach.... more...

...When "going green" sometimes means having large polluters pay for lavish advertisements focused on how much they care about the earth, it helps to look beyond platitudes to tangible specifics. Right now, the telecom industry in general is in the early phase of defining what "going green" means, according to analyst Jason Marcheck at Current Analysis.... more...

...Intertek Ageus Solutions offers complete product evaluation services for California Proposition 65 compliance. With a focus on procurement agreements/supply chain management, data collection and verification, risk assessment, material replacement and traceable documentation, Intertek Ageus Solutions' Product Evaluation services provide a comprehensive approach to protecting clients from Prop 65 prosecution.... more...

...The EU RoHS substance review is in full swing. The Oko Institut, who is conducting the review, has drawn up a list of 46 substances for scrutiny. According to the covering letter the list "is based on declarations provided by suppliers and manufacturers of EEE, existing studies, XRF-analyses and other information."... more...

...REPIC has said its arrangements for securing sufficient WEEE recycling evidence are now falling into place "like the pieces of a chess board", in the wake of yesterday's trading deal with Electrolink. The producer compliance scheme is responsible for funding around half of the target level of UK WEEE recycling in the household sector by tonnage, under the WEEE Regulations.... more...

...Millions of PCs are unnecessarily dumped every year with no thought for recycling, vendor claims. UK consumers and business unnecessarily junk 12.5 million computers every year which end up in landfill, or dumped in the countryside. Recognising increasing public concern with green issues, PC maker Fujitsu Siemens Computers (FSC) recently issued research figures that show the level of pollution caused by businesses and consumers that discard PCs and laptops. The manufacturer called for councils to set up dedicated IT recycling sections that could reclaim and recycle PCs before another wave of redundant computers could be chucked out by owners.... more...

...The electronics industry is taking steps to become more environmentally friendly, claimed Greenpeace, despite only one manufacturer scoring more than 50 per cent on its green test. Greenpeace published its latest study of products submitted coluntariy by 14 manufacturers, and revealed that only Sony products were awarded five or more out of ten.... more...

...According to Greenpeace, the electronics industry is taking steps to become more responsive to environmental concerns, but still has a long way to go in the development of truly environmentally friendly products. In a recent Greenpeace survey, Searching for Greener Electronics, conducted at the CeBit trade show in Hanover, Germany, only Sony's Vaio notebook and Ericsson Phone/PDA products received more than half of the available 100 points.... more...

...PC has announced its first two certifications for Lead-Free Electronics Assembly Process Capability in Asia. Flextronics Industrial, a market segment of Flextronics (Shen Zhen) Co., and Nokia Telecommunications Ltd. Dongguan Branch Co. passed the IPC certification audit that demonstrates critical processes for the production of lead-free assemblies in compliance with the European Union's Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive (2002/95/EC).... more...

...Thermo Scientific NITON(R) XL3 700 Series XRF Analyzers Offer Unparalleled Performance and Provide Fast, Accurate Screening for Restricted Metals... more...

...The system by which producer compliance schemes (PCSs) report on the waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) they have processed faces total chaos according to the director of The Environment Exchange. PCSs will have to produce the evidence of the amount of WEEE they have disposed of, refurbished or recycled by the end of May. However, they will only have beeen informed of their legal obligations at the start of the month.... more...

...ZURICH, Switzerland - Engineers the world over are used tooptimizing for size, cost, reliability and power consumption. They are also used to a relatively free-hand in how to make those optimizations and how to weigh different factors - say the brightness and look of a display versus power consumption; or the way power management works to save power in standby mode.... more...

...Producer compliance schemes Electrolink and REPIC appear to be moving closer to some kind of agreement in their dispute over surplus recycling evidence for waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE). Although the schemes are not revealing any details at this stage, they have confirmed that following a meeting on Thursday February 21, "constructive dialogue" is continuing between them today.... more...

...NEC Computers is offering a free IT hardware recycling service for customers and businesses. The UltraClean Service enables organisations to call on NEC expertise to organise the removal of redundant IT hardware, including CRT monitors and other equipment with hazardous substances, in accordance with EU Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directive... more...

...It's a frightening statistic, but in the UK we now throw away some 1 million tonnes of electrical and electronic equipment each year. From washing machines to keyboards and lightweight mobile phones to equipment control consoles weighing several tonnes, discard is invariably less expensive than repair, so out it goes! The really frightening thing, of course, is that many types of electrical equipment that finish up on the scrap heap contain toxic metals known to be hazardous to health. Cadmium and mercury are just two of the major polluters which no doubt assisted in triggering the recent EC Directive on Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment which came into force in amended format on January 1st 2008.... more...

...Design Chain Associates, a company that helps manufacturers cope with environmental compliance has released an article from its partner DfR Solutions that looks at the state of pure tin in the electronics industry.... more...

...The United States and European Union seized more than 360k fake ICs and components in a joint operation at the end of 2007, according to reports out this morning. The ICs and components included more than 40 trademarks from the likes of Intel and Philips and were worth more than $1.3 billion.... more...

...The waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) directive echoes consumer demand for knowing that goods are produced and disposed of in an environmentally responsible manner, according to the director of a compliance consultancy. Barry Groves of WE3 Recycled Ltd, told Components in Electronics that some electronic products have toxic materials in them such as cadmium and mercury and the amount of WEEE is rising exponentially.... more...