Richard M. (Dick) Haney of the CMT Group, a technology consulting company in Palo Alto, CA., specializes in product engineering, manufacturing and technical management consulting.

Do the terms RoHS, WEEE, EuP/ErP, LPEUR, ELV, REACH/SVHC, SB20/50, confuse the crap outta you?

These are a few examples of, what this article will call, international Environmental Guardianship (EG) laws, standards, regulations and policies. If you are a Product Development executive, manager, manufacturer or importer/exporter and are not aware of these, then most likely you are unaware of what immediately faces you if you are developing products for selling in specific international and domestic markets. These will effect your products and businesses, so you'd better get to learn about them - and fast! The examples listed above happen to be laws (not voluntary standards or policies) that are currently in effect within the European Union (EU), USA, Japan and other countries. One or more of these EGs could keep your product from legally being placed in some of those markets.

Even if your products are considered to be exempt, you will very likely experience an affect on your business and products, since your suppliers and contract manufacturers will be changing their components, subsystems and manufacturing processes to comply with many of these EG requirements. Also, expect environmental groups and regulatory bodies to bring these issues to the industries' forefront.