After years of providing recycling expertise to stakeholder committees tasked with developing criteria to qualify electronic products to the Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT) registry, Sims has launched a verification service for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) seeking to validate product-specific design for end-of-life declarations required to be listed on the registry. This service – which launched this spring – complements Sims’ existing suite of OEM compliance, asset management and end-of-life recycling services.
Developed in 2005, EPEAT is a global registry designed by multi-stakeholders with assistance from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, to help institutions and consumers evaluate, compare and select environmental attributes and performance of electronic products commonly used in the workplace or home.
The registry currently maintains evaluations of more than 3,000 products from 50 manufacturers in 42 countries. The product types currently included in the registry are computers and displays, imaging equipment and televisions. Evaluation criteria are currently being developed to add computer servers to the registry.
EPEAT registry products are ranked as gold, silver or bronze based on the number required and optional performance criteria met. The evaluation criteria for products currently on the EPEAT registry is broken out into 51 lifecycle or environmental criterion – 23 required and 28 optional – that officially became part of the International Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) 1680 family of standards in 2006.
The design for end-of-life criteria is one of 10 broadly based environmental or life cycle criterion – each with multiple required and optional sub-criterion – required to be met to achieve a products listing on the registry. Design for end-of-life criteria varies by product type, but Sims’ experience as a global electronics recycling and asset management company enables us to easily assess or perform the verification testing required under the criterion for any product type.
A sample of common required and optional criteria Sims can verify or test for include:
- Ease of disassembly of product
- Recyclability of plastics
- Restriction on materials not compatible with reuse and recycling
- Manual separation and marking of plastics
- Minimum reusable/recyclable rate based on requirements of EU WEEE Directive
- Minimum percentage determined reusable/recyclable
For more information about our new EPEAT design for end-of-life verification service contact us at srs.oem.compliance@simsmm.com.