Cleaner products at lower cost (1/3)

By Hermann Strass European Representative

This text is an excerpt (focusing on environmental topics) of a two-part article, which appeared in print and online in CompactPCI and AdvancedTCA Systems magazine in April and May 2005 respectively, under the Technology in Europe column. These topics will be continuously updated on this web page.

Legal requirements
Some of the legislation for the 'Restriction of the use of certain Hazardous Substances' (RoHS) and the directive on 'Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment' (WEEE) started about 25 years ago. So everybody knew it was coming. Both directives became effective on January 2, 2003. The EU is a union of sovereign states; therefore it issues directives rather than laws. These directives must be translated into the local languages and made into national laws in each country. Typically, this takes about 18 months. The main objective is harmonization of laws, regulations, and standards, in all of the member states to provide equal and fair trade, labor, and business conditions.

This equipment list is also used to specify the applicability of the RoHS directive. Specific notes or exceptions reference some or all of these listed categories.

Table 1. Maximum Concentration Value (MCV) allowed in RoHS & WEEE

Environmental efforts at Fujitsu Siemens Computers (FSC)
Fujitsu-Siemens Computers (FSC) is meeting lead-free and waste prevention requirements in cost critical mass production on a big scale (with lower cost than current production), not just in isolated partial solutions in experimental set-ups, for its PC and AdvancedTCA production in Augsburg, Germany and other places. FSC is typically placed into position four on the list of worldwide PC producers and number one in Europe. Several production lines for PC and workstation motherboards at the FSC factory in Augsburg, Germany have been converted to lead-free production in an around-the-clock (three shifts per day) operation (Figure 1). Green (WEEE compliant) computers from this factory are not more expensive than traditionally produced equipment.

Figure 1. The FSC factory in Augsburg, Germany, where several production lines for PC and workstation motherboards have been converted to lead-free production.

AdvancedTCA products from FSC will be lead-free and green (RoHS and WEEE compliant) when they appear on the market during the second half of 2005. FSC made this possible by recycling computers beginning in 1988. The company is currently exceeding WEEE requirements significantly with consequential savings in overall production costs. FSC designs products with the goal of recycling up to 98 percent of the materials. For example, FSC has jointly developed with Toray (a leading chemical company in Japan) a plastic material for the housing of Notebook PCs (such as FMV-BIBLO NB80K) that is made almost completely from plant (organic) material. The material is flame-retardant, suitable for mass production, and dramatically reduces the amount of petroleum and CO2 used in its production. The SCENIC C620 desktop PC now uses the new lead-free chipset i915GV from Intel, which combined with other measures, reduces the lead content of the motherboard from 12 grams to 1 gram.

Several series of desktop PCs (SCENIC) and workstations (CELSIUS) are already available in compliance with RoHS and WEEE directives. Large corporations, insurance companies, banks, health, and government authorities already write compliance to RoHS and WEEE into their request for quotes. FSC computers are also halogen-free or contain lower than the tolerated amounts of bromine, chlorine, or other halogens. FSC (Siemens Nixdorf at that time) opened the world's first facility in 1996, capable of automatically detecting and classifying different plastic materials in their recycling plant.

Products are classified into three categories for recycling or disposal. These include:

1. Level 1: Refurbish and reuse complete systems, possibly for customers who might need spares or replacements for EOL products to prolong the useful lifetime of well-running systems
2. Level 2: Refurbish and reuse of components such as boards similar to Level 1, but not for reuse in new systems
3. Level 3: Segregate components such as plastic and metal into up to 60 different groups of substances for environmentally safe disposal or reuse.

In 2002, more than 90 percent of the material could be recycled at FSC in Paderborn, Germany. This rate is now at 98 percent for the treatment of approximately 5,000 tons of returned electronic waste per year.

FSC develops and produces their own PC motherboards and designs and produces almost all their PCs in house, mostly in Augsburg, Germany. During the design phase, the requirements for lead-free production and easy recycling are considered. Several automatic production lines are already producing lead-free PC motherboards. Other lines are converted as they depreciate. FSC started this expensive conversion process (approximately $500,000 per line) a long time ago. Actually, green motherboards and other Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs) are colored blue rather than green. By tradition practically all PCBs worldwide (made mostly from FR-4 plastic material) have been colored green. Coloring environmentally green boards blue allows for easy differentiation between traditional and green material at recycling time, saving chemical analysis costs.

The current plans of FSC are to be compliant with EU directives by December 31, 2005 for all business products and by March 31, 2006 with all consumer products, long before the legal requirement dates. AdvancedTCA products will be compliant right at production start.

The FSC products are complying with numerous requirements such as Energy Star, Blue Angel, Nordic Swan TCO, and others. The FSC factory in Augsburg, Germany has won the Best Factory, Industrial Excellence Award 2003 and they are certified to ISO 14001 (environment-friendly production).

FSC has already improved their logistics, for example, material flow significantly. They are now developing self-organizing flow algorithms based on ant and wasp behavior in a research project together with scientists from the University of Stuttgart and the Neural Computation Centre at Siemens Corporate Technology. Experimental results show a 44 percent reduction in delivery delays.

The transition to RoHS and WEEE compliance should be taken as an opportunity to clean up and streamline business processes and establish less complicated management procedures.

Summary
Japan has laws about Promoting Green Purchasing, Promotion of Effective Utilization of Resources, Pollutant Release and Transfer Register (PRTR), and others. Companies such as NEC or Sony produce all their consumer products for the Japanese market in compliance with these laws.

The Canadian Standards Association has issued a number of standards on environmental management, anaerobic biodegradability of plastic materials, green procurement, and many others.

Manufacturers, distributors, and resellers selling or trading in the EU need to comply with WEEE by August 2005 and RoHS by July 2006. Therefore it is not necessary to quote their commitment. However, some have announced early compliance and support for their customers during the transition period. For example BuS Elektronik, (Germany), a medium-sized EMS, started soldering and assembling lead-free boards in 2002. They introduced reflow and selective lead-free soldering in 2003 and lead-free wave soldering in 2004.

Compliance to RoHS, WEEE, and similar Japanese legal requirements can be done both from a technology standpoint and economically. It reduces the amount of hazardous substances for everybody and reduces the size of the waste mountains significantly. In Japan, nondemanding consumer products have been produced lead-free for some years.

Hermann Strass
May 2005

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