By Sustainability team
3rd June 2010.
09:19

Parliament voting on RoHS

Yesterday the environmental committee (ENVI) in the European Parliament voted on the amendments in the revision of the RoHS directive.

The result was that no new substances are proposed to be banned immediately when the directive enters into force (i.e. no substances are included into Annex IV of the directive). However, a number of substances, including brominated flame retardants (BFR) and PVC, are proposed to be evaluated for a possible future ban.

Sony Ericsson has worked for an extended ban of BFR and PVC and even if we are dissapointed with the outcome of the votings and that there will be no immediate bans, the proposal from the environmental committee gives a strong signal to the market that these substances are problematic.

Once again this shows that Sony Ericsson did the right thing when decided to phase out BFR and PVC more than five years ago! We also encourage the rest of the industry to do so, where this is possible.

So, what will happen next? The European Parliament will vote on the amendments in Plenary in July and then the Commission, the Council and Parliament have to agree on a common ground for the legislative texts. If everything goes smoothly, the directive could be adopted during the autumn 2010.