APC 2011 Annual Report Download - page 67

REGISTRATION DOCUMENT 2011 SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC 65
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
2
SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC’S COMMITMENT TOENVIRONMENTALPERFORMANCE
•anticipate and ensure conformity with statutory provisions,
especially with regard to chemical products;
•facilitate eco-design of their products and services by supplying
all the appropriate information;
•reduce end of working-life installation costs for the customer by
optimisation of recycling.
In order to be the fi rst to supply its customers with all the
environmental information that they need, Schneider Electric
developed Green Premium - a unique eco-brand based on clearly
defi ned criteria - including ad hoc environmental information on
itsproducts.
A solution falls under the Green Premium branding if it satisfi es the
four following criteria:
•complies with the RoHS European directive, i.e. it does not
include one of the six substances stated in this directive;
•contains information relating to the presence of Substances of Very
High Concern (SVHC) within the scope of the REACHEuropean
regulation;
•has a Product Environmental Profi le (PEP) providing a list
of materials, a recycling rate and a calculation of eleven
environmental impacts such as raw material and energy
consumption, carbon footprint and damage to the ozone layer.
This environmental profi le is established over the whole product
life cycle, from manufacture to end of working life;
•contains a guide identifying and locating the subsets or
components required for a particular recycling process, called
the End-of-Life Instruction guide (EoLI).
With an end-of-year target for 2011 of two thirds of global product
sales made up of Green Premium offers (based on 2008 sales),
Schneider Electric is clearly positioning itself as a sector leader and
occupies a unique role based on:
•its “green” solutions;
•its evaluation of environmental impacts, especially in terms of
substances contained and of end-of-life;
•its transparency through information available on its web portal;
•the reliability of its information with systematic reference to
international standards available.
Green Premium is an integral part of the creation and development
process for Schneider Electric’s offers as a critical deliverable for
marketing product offers.
All the information is made available to Schneider Electric
customers on the Group’s web portal. The conformity information
for RoHS and SVHC is available on the Check a Product website
dedicated to environmental information. The Product Environmental
Profi le information and End-of-Life Instruction are available on the
Products and Services website.
Action plans
Substance Management
Schneider Electric is subject to European environmental regulation,
with particular emphasis on the use of toxic substances.
The REACH regulation requires traceability of dangerous substances
and the RoHS directive requires elimination of six substances
(lead, mercury, cadmium, hexavalent chromium, polybrominated
biphenyls (PBBs) and polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDE).
Schneider Electric has implemented the RoHS and REACH
programs by applying these European regulations.
The RoHS program, started in 2006, aims to eliminate the six
substances from all products. By deciding to eliminate these
substances from all its products, whether or not affected by the
directive or sold on the European market or worldwide, Schneider
Electric has gone far beyond the directive’s requirements.
Efforts to bring products into compliance continued in 2011,
particularly for the new entities to have recently joined Schneider
Electric. However, for certain offers that have little to do with
the scope of the RoHS directive, such as the medium voltage
equipment of AREVA Distribution activities, the RoHS compliance
decision has been deferred.
A new RoHS directive 2011/65/EU came into force on July,21,
2011. The earlier directive, RoHS 2002/95/EC, will be repealed
on January3, 2003, the date by which Member States must have
transposed this directive into national regulations.
This new directive has two important developments: the extension
of the scope to all electrical and electronic equipment until 2019
and the CE mark, but no new substance is added to the existing list
of six substances stated in the fi rst directive.
As a result of the implemented RoHS program, Schneider Electric
is a very good position to ensure conformity with this new directive
because most of the work regarding product conformity has already
been undertaken.
Directives similar to the RoHS European directive are now in force or
being discussed in several countries. 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 and
Schneider Electric is able to offer products which comply with the
RoHS directives on all its markets (China, South Korea, Japan, etc.).
The REACH program, started in 2008, aims to:
•ensure that substances used by Schneider Electric and its
subsidiaries are registered and authorised for the applications in
question, in accordance with REACH requirements;
•formalise the information to be provided to customers about
the presence and level of hazardous substances in Schneider
Electric products;
•anticipate the substitutes that will certainly be needed for certain
chemical substances, avoiding any impact on Schneider Electric
product performance.
In 2011, the REACH program was mainly strengthened in the
following areas:
•consideration of the updates to the substance list published by
the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA);
•the replacement project for SVHC phthalate substances in
cables;
•preparation of notifi cation for the European Chemicals Agency
(ECHA) about SVHC substances used in our products;