Electronics recycling in Korea: a national law governing electronics waste goes into effect Jan. 1.

Ed.: The complete article may be viewed at circuitsassembly.com/cms/content/view/5153.

Since 2001, five EU directives regarding the restriction of hazardous substances and the promotion of their recycling in the electrical and electronics products and automobiles have come into effect: WEEE, RoHS, EuP, Type Approval of Motor Vehicle and ELV. Regarding electrical and electronics products, RoHS restricts use of six hazardous substances in the products; EuP requires product design to consider environmental and energy attributes, and WEEE defines recovery and recycling of electric and electronics waste. For automobiles, ELV restricts four heavy metals in the products and prescribes the recovery and recycling of end-of-life vehicles; the revised directive for type approval contains newly added provisions for recyclability rate. These five EU directives are influencing other countries' efforts, including Japan, China and the U.S., and the ripple effect is rapidly gaining.

In the wake of the trend, since early 2003, Korea has considered a law corresponding to the EU regulations for electrical and electronics products and automobiles (Figure 1). It has now adopted the Act for Resource Recycling of Electrical/Electric Products and Automobiles, which includes all key regulatory actions of the five directives for those products. And it is drawing the attention of companies worldwide.

The key targets of these regulations are:

* Target products and restricted substances.

* Design for recyclability.

* Recycling information.

* End-of-life recycling system.

Detailed requirements in the final version of the Act and the draft version of the Enforcement Ordinance and Enforcement Regulation are:

1. Target products and restricted substances.

Criteria for substance restriction, including type, maximum concentration values and exemptions will be consistent with the EU directives.

The final version of the Act says target products and restricted substances will be prescribed by presidential decree. The draft version of Enforcement Ordinance and Enforcement Regulation provides the details (1):

Target products will be the same as the electrical/electronic products in the scope of a pre-existing Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) regulation called "Act on the Promotion of Saving and Recycling of Resources", which is now rolled into the Act. This includes 10 items: TVs, refrigerators, air conditioners, laundry machines, personal computers, audio devices, cellular phones, printers, copy machines and fax machines.

Restricted substances in electrical and electronic products are defined as lead, mercury, hexavalent chromium, cadmium, PBB and PBDE.

Junsik Yoon is associate, SV2 team, Sustainability Value Division, at Eco-Frontier (ecofrontier.co.kr/eng/). Michael Kirschner is president of Design Chain Associates LLC (designchainassociates.com); [e-mail].