RoHS: Restriction of Hazardous Substances- Compliance Requirements
Understanding ROHS compliance is essential if you manufacture, import, or distribute electrical and electronic equipment (EEE) for the UK market. Compliance shields your goods from fines and stopped shipments. It aids in meeting the demands of customers and governments everywhere. Additionally, it reduces waste, scrap, and rework, strengthens the brand, and promotes supplier alignment.
What is RoHS?
Restriction of Hazardous Substances is the full form for RoHS. An “EU Act restricting the use of hazardous substances in EEE and promoting the collection and recycling of such equipment” is what this regulation is called. The 2003-enacted guideline encourages the efficient recovery, reuse, and recycling of items. The quantity of dangerous compounds in energy-consuming products is regulated.
Equipment to be concerned:
- large home appliances (LHA)
- Small home appliances (SHA)
- telecommunications and IT hardware
- consumer products
- lighting apparatus
- electronic and electrical devices
- toys, entertainment, and sporting goods
- medical equipment
- Instruments for monitoring and controlling
The following items are specifically excluded from the ROHS directive’s purview:
- products intended for space travel or military usage
- products intended for space travel
- particularly created equipment that will be installed as a component of another sort of equipment
- Fixed installations and large-scale industrial equipment
- industrial equipment stationary on large size
- transport methods (apart from certain two-wheeled electric vehicles)
- Mobile equipment off-road for business purpose
- Products accessible on a business-to-business basis for research and development
- Active medical devices that are implanted
RoHS Conformity:
- All goods you sell in the UK must adhere to RoHs and must:
- possess a current technical file declaration
- Have a statement of compliance
- Be note appropriately
- Affix the CE label.
To check if your items are RoHS compliant, use the checklist below:
- Do my EEE components and subassemblies have lead (Pb), mercury (Hg), cadmium (Cd), hexavalent chromium (CrVI), polybrominated biphenyls (PBB), polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDE), and four distinct phthalates (DEHP, BBP, BBP, DIBP) in amounts below the maximum permitted levels?
- Do I assess and certify my own production controls using the guidelines outlined in the regulations?
- Are my items covered by a Declaration of Conformity and a technical file that demonstrates compliance?
- If the Office for Product Safety and Standards (Safety & Standards) requests it, is the Declaration of conformity easily accessible?
- Am I aware that the technical file and Declaration of Conformity must be kept for ten years after the EEE is first sold in the UK?
- Do each of my items include a type, batch, or serial number that includes the name, address, and registered trade name or mark of the manufacturer?
- Do my items have the CE label on them?
- Do all the requirements placed on the manufacturers are met if I am an importer selling EEE on the UK market under my own name or trademark?
- Does the EEE I distribute, if I’m a distributor, have the proper markings and the CE label?
- Does a product modified by a distributor, such as myself, still adhere to all the demands placed on manufacturers?
