2010Annual Report - Schneider Electric CZ, s.r.o.
2010Annual Report - Schneider Electric CZ, s.r.o.
2010Annual Report - Schneider Electric CZ, s.r.o.
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• The communication of information on the presence of hazardous<br />
substances continued in 2010, to take account of the extension<br />
of the list of substances needing authorisation. The number<br />
of these substances went from 30 on January 1, 2010 to 46<br />
on December 15, 2010. This need for communication is taken<br />
into account before marketing offers: all new products are now<br />
designed to comply with RoHS’s technical constraints and<br />
provide the necessary information required by REACH.<br />
• This information is centralised and published on a database which<br />
can be accessed free online (1) , making it possible to immediately<br />
obtain a REACH certifi cate for one or several articles, and this<br />
same information is exported into a spreadsheet, thus facilitating<br />
its manipulation. Several thousand visitors look at this database<br />
every month worldwide; in addition to the English and French<br />
versions, it has been translated into Spanish and German;<br />
in addition to the corporate site, the country sites copy and<br />
distribute this information for their clients, partners, and clients of<br />
their clients, wherever their location.<br />
• <strong>Schneider</strong> <strong>Electric</strong> is a member of a technical consortium along<br />
with other large companies and research laboratories. <strong>Schneider</strong><br />
<strong>Electric</strong>’s objective is to be able to validate the technical feasibility<br />
of replacing chemical substances its products.<br />
• The Group has continued its policy of exchanging methodology<br />
and good practice within European and international seminars.<br />
On the back of its excellent positioning in relation to the<br />
implementation of REACH, <strong>Schneider</strong> <strong>Electric</strong> is now working<br />
on its information systems with a view to automating REACH<br />
analysis of its products, in order to guarantee that information is<br />
updated as often as required.<br />
RoHS directive<br />
Whilst the <strong>Schneider</strong> <strong>Electric</strong> products directly covered by the RoHS<br />
directive are extremely limited, a larger proportion is concerned<br />
indirectly. This is the case for <strong>Schneider</strong> <strong>Electric</strong> equipment<br />
integrated into products covered by the directive and sold by other<br />
companies, which are the Group’s clients. That is why since July 1,<br />
2006 <strong>Schneider</strong> <strong>Electric</strong> brought the products directly concerned by<br />
the regulation into compliance, and it has also gradually done the<br />
same for its other products. Although the RoHS Europe directive only<br />
applies to products sold in Europe, <strong>Schneider</strong> <strong>Electric</strong> has decided to<br />
bring its entire product offer into compliance worldwide. By deciding<br />
to eliminate these substances in all its products, <strong>Schneider</strong> <strong>Electric</strong><br />
has gone far beyond the directive’s requirements.<br />
For every product which complies, <strong>Schneider</strong> <strong>Electric</strong> specifi es the<br />
date from which the production of the RoHS compliant version was<br />
effective. For products which still do not comply and with signifi cant<br />
production volumes, <strong>Schneider</strong> <strong>Electric</strong> indicates the provisional date<br />
for the production of an RoHS version. This information is available<br />
on the <strong>Schneider</strong> <strong>Electric</strong> website, and on a certain number of the<br />
Group’s country websites.<br />
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT<br />
SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC’S COMMITMENT TO ENVIRONMENTAL PERFORMANCE<br />
At the end of 2009, only part of the local product offers specifi c to<br />
a particular country, and products due to be withdrawn from the<br />
market in the short term or manufactured in very small quantities<br />
were not RoHS compliant.<br />
In 2010, efforts to bring products into compliance continued,<br />
particularly for the new entities to have recently joined the Group.<br />
However, for certain entities whose products have little to do with the<br />
scope of the RoHS directive, such as the medium voltage equipment<br />
of the former AREVA Distribution, the RoHS compliance decision<br />
has been deferred.<br />
> POINT OF VIEW ON ROHS DEVELOPMENTS<br />
On November 24, 2010, the European Parliament<br />
passed a draft revision of this directive called “RoHS2”.<br />
This new text was the subject of long discussions<br />
throughout 2010 between the European Commission,<br />
the Parliament and the industrial federations. <strong>Schneider</strong><br />
<strong>Electric</strong> actively participated in these talks as French<br />
representative in Orgalime, the European working<br />
group. This new directive is expected to be published<br />
in the Offi cial Journal of the European Union at the start<br />
of 2011.<br />
Directives similar to the RoHS European directive are<br />
now in force or being discussed in several countries.<br />
There are very strong similarities with the European<br />
directive, even if the implementations may be different.<br />
<strong>Schneider</strong> <strong>Electric</strong>’s decision to generalise the<br />
application of the RoHS to all its products has helped<br />
anticipate developments in regulations all over the<br />
world. Consequently, <strong>Schneider</strong> <strong>Electric</strong> is able to offer<br />
products which comply with the RoHS directives on all<br />
its markets.<br />
This is notably the case in China where an RoHS<br />
directive has been in force since March 1, 2007, and<br />
in South Korea and Japan. New RoHS regulations are<br />
currently being discussed in India, the USA, Serbia, etc.<br />
Product environmental profiles (PEP)<br />
A dedicated program has been set up to publish product<br />
environmental profi les (PEPs) for all products sold by <strong>Schneider</strong><br />
<strong>Electric</strong>. At the end of 2010, 344 PEPs had been published.<br />
The analysis of each product’s environmental characteristics looks at:<br />
• the materials used;<br />
• the presence of hazardous substances as defi ned by RoHS;<br />
• 10 environmental impacts during the four lifecycle stages, i.e. the<br />
consumption of raw materials and energy, the carbon footprint,<br />
the damage to the ozone layer, the production of photochemical<br />
ozone, the acidifi cation of the air, the production of dangerous<br />
waste, the eutrophication of the water, the toxicity of the air and<br />
the rate of recyclability.<br />
2010 REGISTRATION DOCUMENT SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC 69<br />
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