APC 2010 Annual Report Download - page 71

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC’S COMMITMENT TOENVIRONMENTAL PERFORMANCE
•The communication of information on the presence of hazardous
substances continued in 2010, to take account of the extension
of the list of substances needing authorisation. The number
of these substances went from 30 on January1, 2010 to 46
on December15, 2010. This need for communication is taken
into account before marketing offers: all new products are now
designed to comply with RoHS’s technical constraints and
provide the necessary information required by REACH.
•This information is centralised and published on a database which
can be accessed free online(1), making it possible to immediately
obtain a REACH certifi cate for one or several articles, and this
same information is exported into a spreadsheet, thus facilitating
its manipulation. Several thousand visitors look at this database
every month worldwide; in addition to the English and French
versions, it has been translated into Spanish and German;
in addition to the corporate site, the country sites copy and
distribute this information for their clients, partners, and clients of
their clients, wherever their location.
•Schneider Electric is a member of a technical consortium along
with other large companies and research laboratories. Schneider
Electric’s objective is to be able to validate the technical feasibility
of replacing chemical substances its products.
•The Group has continued its policy of exchanging methodology
and good practice within European and international seminars.
On the back of its excellent positioning in relation to the
implementation of REACH, Schneider Electric is now working
on its information systems with a view to automating REACH
analysis of its products, in order to guarantee that information is
updated as often as required.
RoHS directive
Whilst the Schneider Electric products directly covered by the RoHS
directive are extremely limited, a larger proportion is concerned
indirectly. This is the case for Schneider Electric equipment
integrated into products covered by the directive and sold by other
companies, which are the Group’s clients. That is why since July1,
2006 Schneider Electric brought the products directly concerned by
the regulation into compliance, and it has also gradually done the
same for its other products. Although the RoHS Europe directive only
applies to products sold in Europe, Schneider Electric has decided to
bring its entire product offer into compliance worldwide. By deciding
to eliminate these substances in all its products, Schneider Electric
has gone far beyond the directive’s requirements.
For every product which complies, Schneider Electric specifi es the
date from which the production of the RoHS compliant version was
effective. For products which still do not comply and with signifi cant
production volumes, Schneider Electric indicates the provisional date
for the production of an RoHS version. This information is available
on the Schneider Electric website, and on a certain number of the
Group’s country websites.
At the end of 2009, only part of the local product offers specifi c to
a particular country, and products due to be withdrawn from the
market in the short term or manufactured in very small quantities
were not RoHS compliant.
In 2010, efforts to bring products into compliance continued,
particularly for the new entities to have recently joined the Group.
However, for certain entities whose products have little to do with the
scope of the RoHS directive, such as the medium voltage equipment
of the former AREVA Distribution, the RoHS compliance decision
has been deferred.
>POINT OF VIEW ON ROHS DEVELOPMENTS
On November 24, 2010, the European Parliament
passed a draft revision of this directive called “RoHS2”.
This new text was the subject of long discussions
throughout 2010 between the European Commission,
the Parliament and the industrial federations. Schneider
Electric actively participated in these talks as French
representative in Orgalime, the European working
group. This new directive is expected to be published
in the Offi cial Journal of the European Union at the start
of 2011.
Directives similar to the RoHS European directive are
now in force or being discussed in several countries.
There are very strong similarities with the European
directive, even if the implementations may be different.
Schneider Electric’s decision to generalise the
application of the RoHS to all its products has helped
anticipate developments in regulations all over the
world. Consequently, Schneider Electric is able to offer
products which comply with the RoHS directives on all
its markets.
This is notably the case in China where an RoHS
directive has been in force since March1,2007, and
in South Korea and Japan. New RoHS regulations are
currently being discussed in India, the USA, Serbia, etc.
Product environmental profiles (PEP)
A dedicated program has been set up to publish product
environmental profi les (PEPs) for all products sold by Schneider
Electric. At the end of 2010, 344 PEPs had been published.
The analysis of each product’s environmental characteristics looks at:
•the materials used;
•the presence of hazardous substances as defi ned by RoHS;
•10environmental impacts during the four lifecycle stages, i.e. the
consumption of raw materials and energy, the carbon footprint,
the damage to the ozone layer, the production of photochemical
ozone, the acidifi cation of the air, the production of dangerous
waste, the eutrophication of the water, the toxicity of the air and
the rate of recyclability.
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