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2015 REGISTRATION DOCUMENT SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC74
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
2SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC’S COMMITMENT TOENVIRONMENTAL PERFORMANCE
3.3 Eco-Design
Approach
In the context of Schneider Electric’s environmental strategy, the
eco-design of the products and solutions the Group offers to its
customers is a major component for participating in the fi ght against
climate change, reducing the growing scarcity of raw materials, and
ensuring respect for and the protection of the health of those using
its products and solutions.
Moreover, all countries, particularly the European Union, the United
States and China are increasingly working to develop regulations to
implement a legal framework for eco-design.
For example, the European Union has established eco-design
directives for certain product groups over the last several years.
The Schneider Electric policy on eco-design is organized around
the following components:
1) Management of the substances used in the products
The strategy for materials and substances is refl ected in a
directive and applied as follows. Since 2008, Schneider Electric
has anticipated and modifi ed the design of its products in order
to comply with and go beyond European regulations: RoHS and
REACH. Schneider Electric has expanded the application of
these regulations to all its production in all countries in which the
products are marketed.
Schneider Electric has made this effort a reality with the Green
Premium ecoLabel by making Product Environmental Profi les
(PEP) and end of life instruction guides (EoLi documents)
available to its customers.
2) Product design
Since early 2015, the design teams working on new products
and solutions have been committed to the ecoDesign Way.
The objective by 2017 is that all projects to design new Schneider
Electric products will have implemented this method, which
is intended to measure the improvement in the environmental
footprint of the products in all its offers over the entire life cycle
of the products.
The method is strongly driven by Schneider Electric’s desire
to place on the market products that are part of the circular
economy by offering greater maintainability, reparability, capacity
for retrofi tting, and reprocessing at the end of the life cycle.
The purpose of this approach is to highlight Schneider Electric’s
commitment and make it concrete by marketing products that
are always increasingly respectful of the environment. This
approach is integrated within an ongoing improvement process
backed by ambitious objectives, particularly those coming from
the «substances and materials» directive, and by anticipating
the regulations of the various geographic regions. Schneider
Electric’s commitments to reduce the CO2 impact and resources
of its product lines are strong and ambitious. This design method
forms a central way to achieve them.
The Group’s customers benefi t from these commitments which
allow them in turn to achieve a portion of their own commitments
with regard to CO2, the environment, energy effi ciency or other .
Schneider Electric also fi nds that a growing percentage of its
customers expect these commitments, welcome its progress,
and use the digital tools from which the Group provides them
with all the environmental information for more than 150,000
SKUs (stock-keeping unit).
3) WEEE Regulations
Schneider Electric has for a long time been engaged in a
process that protects the environment and the health of people
in the treatment and recycling of its products at the end of the
life cycle.
In the context of the application of the Waste Electric and
Electronic Equipment (WEEE) directive, Schneider Electric
is implementing product identifi cation and selection actions,
establishing recycling streams and pricing the taxes to be
applied in compliance with the regulations of each country in
which products are sold.
Action plans
Substance Management
In 2015, Schneider Electric updated its Substance and Materials
strategy to better meet growing customer expectations, perpetuate
compliance with the most stringent regulations and directives and,
fi nally, anticipate the obsolescence of materials or components to
secure its supply chain.
This strategy is deployed globally through an internal directive
based on the REACH regulation (EC 1907/2006), the RoHS
Directive (2011/65/EU), the regulation on substances that weaken
the ozone layer (EC 1005/2009), the fl uorinated gases regulation
(EC 517/2014), the ban on halogenated fl ame retardants in plastics
and, fi nally, the increased use of recycled or bio-sources plastics
and, more generally, the promotion of the use of non-fossil and
recycled materials when pertinent.
In 2015, Schneider Electric conducted a vast plan to replace four
phthalates (subject to authorization by the REACH regulation
and prohibited by the RoHS Directive beginning in 2019) and the
HBCDD. This replacement plan has drastically reduced the number
of products containing phthalates or HBCDD.
The RoHS and REACH programs, initiated in 2006 and 2008
respectively, are supported by a project to collect environmental
declarations from materials and component suppliers, which are
updated every six months, in order to maintain the environmental
declarations for Schneider Electric products up to date. Based on
standard EN50581, the collection of standardized environmental
declarations also expands the fi eld of knowledge of the substances
directly in the information systems for designing an offer in order to
anticipate their potential obsolescence or ban.
The RoHS program is intended to eliminate the six substances
cited 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
exceeded the directive’s requirements.