MEPs split over use of chemicals in household goods

Green MEP wants a ban on flame retardants and PVC.

Arguments over chemical compounds used in manufacturing electronic devices and household goods are splitting the European Parliament’s environment committee.

Jill Evans, a British member of the Greens and European Free Alliance (EFA) group, is pressing for a ban on three new substances: two flame retardants and the plastic PVC (polyvinyl chloride). She cites technical studies by the European Commission that show that the flame retardants create dioxins, and that PVC gives off toxic gases when it is recycled.

Evans is drafting the Parliament’s position on a draft directive on the Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) in electrical and electronic equipment, which the Parliament’s environment committee will vote on next week (2 June).

Opposition

The proposals for a ban are opposed by MEPs in the European People’s Party (EPP) and the European Conservatives’ and Reformists’ group. Boguslaw Sonik, a Polish EPP member, urges restraint during the economic crisis in imposing new demands on industry. Any possible chemical bans should in any case be dealt with under the 2006 REACH regulation, he argues. Discussions on a compromise were still taking place when European Voice went to press.

The Commission also has doubts about Evans’s proposal. The original 2002 RoHS directive banned lead and two types of brominated flame retardants, but the Commission sees the current revision as a more limited tidying-up exercise rather than an opportunity to add new chemicals to the RoHS’s blacklist.

Earlier this month, four consumer electronics companies – Acer, Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Sony Ericsson – joined forces with environmental campaigners to back a ban on all brominated flame retardants and PVC in electronic equipment by 2015. These companies say they are already working to remove these chemicals from their products and would like the same restrictions to apply to all links in their supply chains, as well as to competitors.

The European Engineering Industries Association (Orgalime), which represents electrical and electronic engineers and metalworkers, argues that REACH should be the main EU law on chemicals to avoid bureaucratic overlaps.

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“We have had ten years of discussions on REACH,” said Adrian Harris, director-general of Orgalime. “Let’s do the REACH impact assessment and afterwards decide [on phasing out substances].”

But Green campaigners contend that REACH and RoHS are not interchangeable. RoHS’s focus on “recyclability” and safe disposal of products is not replicated by REACH, according to Christian Schaible, at the European Environmental Bureau.

The full Parliament is expected to vote on the RoHS directive in July. However, work on a companion directive on waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) has been delayed. The committee vote on WEEE that had been planned for Wednesday has been postponed by three weeks, to give MEPs more time to find compromises.

Environment ministers will discuss progress on WEEE and RoHS at their next meeting in June.