Thanks to Dennis Fritz for forwarding the press release from JEITA on agreement to phase out lead solder by 2005 in Japan, USA and EU.

As a USA electronics recycling company executive, I joined  LF about a year ago with an open mind.  True, lead is bad, and has been very successfully phased out of other products, like paint and gasoline.   Also true, lead
solder is basically inert, and leaching in a lined landfill is unlikely to be a major source of pollution.

I kept an open mind that the true environmental benefit, as with most source reduction and recycling, would be at the point of production -- lead mining is pretty atrocious.  But I've been troubled that some of the replacement solder metals are equally bad at point of production.  Gold mining, for example, releases more mercury into the environment than mercury mining.

After a ten day trip to Guangzhou China to visit EPA officials and Chinese smelters and recyclers in October, I realized that the driving force behind the crackdown on recycling in that country is against reuse and repair.
Manufacturers (esp. members of www.antigraymarket.org) see "safe recycling" (shredding) as the "planned obsolescence" of the next century.  The secondary market, in the words of one US printer/PC manufacturer rep I saw
speak, is "market canabalization".  The same OEM paid the Chinese several million dollars to crack down and arrest hundreds of repairers in Ninhai... some of the activity was "counterfeiting", but a lot was refilling ink
cartridges and selling them as used refilled ink cartridges.

Sorry for the long introduction, but here's my question to the group... What may be the effect of "lead free solder" (creep, etc.) on the resale and repair industries?   Will a master technician still be able to resolder a tired joint?  If not, the real loser may be the silent majority of world citizens who rely on the secondary market;  the real winner may not be "knee jerk environmentalist policy makers", but the Original Equipment Manufacturers.



Robin Ingenthron, VP
www.electronicycle.com

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