The European Parliament implemented actions to protect and improve the quality of the environment, to protect health and to use natural resources in a circumspect as well as sensible manner. In this context two important directives were passed:

• RoHS Directive (Directive on the Restriction of the Use of Certain Hazardous Substances in Electric and Electronic Equipment) - Directive 2002/95/EC

• WEEE Directive (Directive on Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment) - Directive 2002/96/EC

The European RoHS Directive comes into force on 1st July 2006. The directive includes measures to ban and reduce certain substances in certain products, for example heavy metal such as lead, mercury, hexavalent chromium and cadmium or certain flame-retardant substances in plastics such as polybromide biphenyl (PBB) and polybromide diphenyl ether (PBDE). 

The second directive came into force on 13th August 2005. This WEEE Directive deals with the recycling of electrical and electronic equipment. Here the recycling target e.g. lies at 4kg per resident per year. WEEE wants to achieve this target by 31st December 2006 at the latest. For the recycling, it is necessary to declare a product's materialistic contents.

We regard it our duty to inform you fully and based on technical facts about our logistics activities and the qualification tests.

Conversion at Variosystems	Directives / Laws	Publications / Norms
Variosystems solder test using SAC solder	WEEE	The Ewaste project
EMPA test report SnPb and Sn AnCu on Sn	WEEE Registers	Current status of the European and German legislation RoHS, WEEE, ElektroG
EMPA report June 05 - Conversion to RoHS	RoHS DE	Action aid on compliance of demands concerning substances on the directive 2002-95-EC (RoHS)
	BMU Bill	Designation of components with product and environmental information
	ElektroG Law on Electric and Electronic Equipment	Example ZVEI Umbrella Specification
	EAR electric equipment registration authority