The basic requirements pertaining to environmentally friendly product design throughout the product's lifecycle are an obligatory part of the design and development process for all new Siemens products and solutions. These requirements and criteria are outlined in a company-wide standard entitled "Specifications on Environmentally Compatible Product and System Design."
The standard also includes a list of declarable substances (LoDS), containing substances that are restricted in use, due to regional or application-specific regulations, or due to potential health and environmental risks posed by these substances themselves and in the manufacture, use and disposal of products containing them. As far as technologically feasible, Siemens avoids the use of all such critical substances in its products worldwide, thus exceeding the existing statutory requirements.
Siemens is committed to continuously improve transparency regarding declarable substances, particularly in purchased parts. Among other things, this serves as a basis for
During the supplier qualification process new suppliers must commit to substance declaration (LoDS). These basic substance declaration requirements are mandatory for our suppliers and are included in procurement and project contracts. Siemens requires its suppliers to inform the Company about the presence of any critical substances in products delivered to Siemens, especially those substances contained in the List of Declarable Substances. If critical substances are present, the supplier is obligated to provide detailed information on the affected products and the substances contained in them.
To make an easy-to-use method with high data quality readily available, Siemens is supporting an industry-wide initiative to permit efficient substance declaration by means of the Internet-hosted database BOMcheck in which our suppliers declare the substances they use in their products.
In its role as importer, manufacturer and user of various chemical substances, Siemens must comply with the EU Regulation on the Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH).
As part of its comprehensive product responsibility and its long-standing chemicals management program, Siemens ensures that all applicable obligations defined in REACH are fulfilled in time. This applies to the pre-registration of certain selected substances and – if required in the future – the registration of such substances according to defined schedules and deadlines.
Some of our products are subject to and comply with Directive 2002/95/EU concerning the “Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS)” in electrical and electronic devices.
The European Commission recently reviewed the RoHS Directive, resulting in the publication of Directive 2011/65/EU. This Directive's national implementation will lead to changes in the scope of the RoHS Directive (medical equipment, for example, will be included from July 2014) and to the obligation for manufacturers to furnish their products with CE labels to show that they conform to the Directive.
We started adapting the relevant business processes accordingly long before 2011, so as to exceed the requirements of the RoHS Directive proactively. For example, we have already introduced lead-free soldering processes for many of our products, including some that are not subject to the RoHS Directive.
2011-Mar-18 | Author