Facing global-warming, manufacturers are invited to think to eco-design. Environmental product declaration also concerns fuses

Global-warming doesn't suffer any doubt today. Nevertheless important are the debates concerning its amplitude, effects and causes. In front of this problem, International Authorities make efforts for a global legislation. In 1992, conclusion of the Summit of Rio on behalf of United Nations was a Declaration on Environment and Development. Later, in 1998, the Kyoto-Protocol to United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change was adopted by most of industrial countries. In despite of this, some stay as opponents. Anybody knows who they are. As a follow up of Kyoto-protocol, European Community stated three orientations for electrical products. First is WEEE, which specifies conditions for the end of live of electrical products. Second is RoHS, which gives rules for restriction of hazardous substances. And third concerns directives for eco-design. EC-economical experts estimated that 80% of global environmental impacts of products are deterred as soon as design-phase. Then, it has been proposed to define a method for carrying out this estimation at the level of each single product. This should take the concrete form of an environmental product declaration (EPD), based upon several criteria such as use of renewable or non-renewable resources, electricity consumption, emission related impacts and waste. For the time being eco-design is not subjected to legal obligations. But manufacturers could have great interest to follow this way. FERRAZ-SHAWMUT uses the help of a so called software "EIME", from CODDE-company for the determination of Environmental-Profiles of his products. The purpose of this paper is to come back to the environmental considerations from legislation-point of view and to compare the environmental profiles of two fuse-ranges.