The impact of lead-free legislation exemptions on the electronics industry

The European Parliament's Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment legislation requires manufacturers to bear responsibility for the mandatory collection, reuse and recycling of electronics products. The Restriction of the use of Hazardous Substances in electrical and electronic equipment legislation mandates the substitution of lead and other hazardous substances in electronics products by July 2006. The lead-free legislation contains a number of exemptions. The impact of the lead-free legislation exemptions varies across different industry sectors and product categories. In this paper, we have outlined the underlying basis of the exemptions and analyzed the relevance and significance of these exemptions to the electronics industry. We then examined how various sectors of the electronics industry will be able to respond to the exemptions in their product development.