I have just received a newsletter from the EIA Environmental Issues Council. Jason Linnell, the editor, has included some recently published articles relating to electronics and the environment. I have copied one full article and an excerpt of another one, because they give some interesting insight into the inner workings of EU environmental politics. Unfortunately, the reporter for these articles doesn't seem very curious, so fails to ask enough questions, thus limiting what could have been even more enlightening. I have added some comments in square brackets. 
 
The first article has to do with determining thresholds for the restricted substances and the meaning of "homogeneous" (these topics are not dealt with in the RoHS directive, which simplistically mandates a total ban). For the second article, I was amazed to see that the environmental activists now want to prohibit landfills (by 2025). But I guess I shouldn't have been surprised. The environment will never be good enough to satisfy them - they'd have to learn new job skills. Having watched the activists for a long time I am quite sure that they would never agree to allow transporting waste outside the EU (by boat, truck, or rocket) as a means of complying with their ban. 
 
The activists seem able eventually to get whatever they decide to demand. So I guess residents of EU countries will have to figure out how to avoid producing waste (total recycling). Or maybe they will figure out how to achieve ash-free incineration. More likely the activists intend that the ashes be treated as ore, but that doesn't address what to do with what's left over from extraction of metals from the ore. Maybe by 2025, with the total elimination of toxic elements (copper, nickel, arsenic, ...?) from products sold in the EU, the activists would agree to allow incinerator ashes to be sold for fertilizer.
 
Assuming we're not dealing with a violation of the law of conservation of mass or of the second law of thermodynamics, I wonder how much extra energy (and money) the activists think will be required to accomplish elimination - or even a significant reduction - of landfilling. Do they think that it can be achieved without global warming? Their apparent goal is "sustainability" and the concurrent elimination of mining. I wonder whether EU citizens would be altruistic enough to assume the added cost of living for the sake of unborn generations, especially when people living elsewhere continued to operate mines and landfills. The activists would then surely turn their attention on the rest of the world (no doubt they already have plans) to try to impose - by whatever means - their belief system on the rest of us as well.
 
The activists seem to have lost any notion of truth, and are left solely with dogma and politically useful assertions. I wonder how unpleasant life will have to get before enough ordinary citizens (and even environmental reporters) realize that they are being deceived, and the activists' long reign of political power enabled by that deception will come to an end.
 
Gordon Davy 
Baltimore, MD 
[log in to unmask]
410-993-7399 
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EU electronics substance ban in dispute, Environment Daily, 9/28/04

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Ministers are to be asked to intervene in a disagreement over the EU's restrictions on hazardous substances (RoHS) directive, it has emerged. The dispute concerns how to regulate trace levels of six hazardous substances being banned in electronics manufacture from July 2006. The European Commission proposed tolerance thresholds in June after a consultation launched last year (ED 19/12/03). It has asked ministers to take over after national experts failed to agree [on] them. Germany and Slovenia voted against, Belgium, Denmark, Poland abstained and five small states failed to vote, depriving those in favour of a sufficient majority. [Which countries' "national experts" hadn't been adequately indoctrinated?] The RoHS directive was published in 2003. It excludes four heavy metals and two classes of brominated flame retardant from electrical and electronic equipment to be sold in the EU (ED 17/02/04).

 

The Commission proposed tolerance thresholds because trace levels of the restricted substances will inevitably be present. It suggested a limit of 0.1% by weight in "homogenous materials" for lead, mercury, hexavalent chromium, PBBs and PBDEs, and 0.01% for cadmium. At issue now is not the thresholds themselves but the definition of homogenous materials. Most worried are companies that stand to gain from the ban on lead. [The author doesn't identify what kind of companies he is referring to.] They complain that the current wording could create a massive loophole, allowing firms that use only small amounts of lead in their products to avoid having to use alternatives. [The author does not explore what the consequences of this "massive loophole" might be.] Equivalent provisions in the EU's end-of-life vehicles directive make clear that traces of banned materials must be "unintentional", they say, but there is no similar safeguard in the RoHS plans. [The author does not explain the reason for the omission of the "unintentional" clause, namely, its unenforceability.] "I find it totally astonishing that this wording can be proposed before any common understanding of its meaning has been provided," one industry source told Environment Daily. Another industry official, James Lovegrove of the American electronics association, was more relaxed. Member states had been concentrating on the linked WEEE directive on electronics recycling. As a result there was simply a lack of majority to push the argument either way, he said.  In addition, industry lobbying on banned substance thresholds had been contradictory, Mr. Lovegrove added. Some firms wanted to see thresholds adopted quickly and for practical implementation to be settled through guidance documents; others wanted legal clarity from the beginning.

 

 

Dimas faces up to a sceptical parliament, Environment Daily, 9-29-04

 

EU environment commissioner-in-waiting Stavros Dimas outlined his priorities for EU environment policy before MEPs on Wednesday... The Greek lawyer said it would be "quite difficult to respond" to a parliament demand for waste landfilling to be banned by 2025. "it would be almost impossible for this to happen in some countries, even by that date", he said. [Perhaps Mr. Dimas knows some countries in which the leaders think that they can comply with this deadline?]


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