Nokia Environmental Report 2002

Environmental Report 2002
S T A K E H O L D E R R E L A T I O N S
Legislation should encourage Design for Environment
Representing the UK constituency of Yorkshire and the
Humber Region, Robert Goodwill was elected to the
European Parliament in 1999. As a member of the Parliament’s
Committee on the Environment, Public Health and
Consumer Policy, he worked for key amendments in the
proposed WEEE and RoHS directives.
Goodwill backed individual producer responsibly for
recycling of electric and electronic equipment and was
instrumental in pushing through the exemption of spare
parts from the ban on lead and other substances detailed
in the RoHS directive. Nokia worked for individual producers
responsibility through the Electronics Coalition, while
the exemption of spare parts from the scheduled substitution
of lead and other restricted substances is of considerable
importance for economically and environmentally
sensible maintenance of network equipment with their
long lifespan.
Goodwill says individual producers responsibility encourages
environmentally beneficial product design. When the
producer knows that he is in the end responsible for the
recycling of his product, he has an incentive to make a
product that can be recycled.
“If you had a solely collective scheme you’d find that the
manufacturers wouldn’t have any reason at all to come up
with products that are easy to recycle.”
Also, it makes sense for producers to build more durable
and better products with valuable materials, such as
copper, if they know the scrap value will be accruing to
them rather than somebody else.
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According to Goodwill, the outcome on the WEEE directive
was a good compromise. Manufacturers who design their
products to be more recyclable will be able to benefit from
that at the end of the product’s life by either having lower
costs of recycling or recouping the materials in those
products.
On the RoHS directive, he says, the exemption of spare
parts to existing equipment was a very sensible solution.
“It would be crazy to throw away a perfectly good piece of
equipment, be it a washing machine or a mobile network
base station, just because no replacement circuit board
was available meeting the new requirement for lead-free
solder.”
The extended transition period for devices with long
service life was the only feasible solution. It would not be
economic for the manufacturers to develop new lead-free
spare parts for existing devices because the demand
would be too low.
Goodwill stresses that products that don’t perform don’t
actually help anyone from the green point of view. If a
product fails, people will throw it away and buy another
one.
“If you have to use inferior technologies or materials
because of eco-legislation, that isn’t green at all because
all that happens is that product life is reduced and people
throw them away.”