Ever since RoHS was implemented in 2006, people have been wondering what happens to the company that gets caught with Pb, Cadmium, Chromium, or certain halogens. In the UK, they use the National Weights and Measures Laboratory (NWML) as the enforcement authority for RoHS. Recently the NWML released their RoHS activities for April 2008 to March 2009. This gives us insight into what at least on EU entity's RoHS efforts are.
NWML reported to have investigated 250 companies for RoHS compliance. From that investigation, it is reported that they issued 14 improvement plans, 3 EU notifications, 4 product withdrawals, 8 compliance notices, and 8 warning letters.
There are several things here that made me think. First, RoHS compliance is a product based compliance and not a company based compliance. Companies can't comply with RoHS but a certain product that they build may or may not comply. Maybe the wording isn't the best or maybe they aren't investigating properly. I assume that it isn't worded properly and that they are really saying that they took 250 products and worked with their producers to ensure complance. Of all the electronics being shipped into the UK, it really surprises me that they only looked at 250 products throughout an entire year. Of the millions of electronic products flowing into the UK, they only looked at 250? That doesn't seem like very effective screening. What's even more disturbing though is that of the 250 they did look at, they found 37 with some issue. That means there was 15% with some type of non-compliance.
In summary, they came up with a law that is not properly enforced AND not properly followed. Who came up with this RoHS idea anyway? If you are interested in the complete NWML report, click here.