Component shortages forseen as electronics go green

MAKERS OF COMPUTER BITS are likely to find components hard to come by once western governments go green, stargazers at Gartner warned.

Planetary alignments suggest vendors should invest in R&D to make sure their products are green enough for future legislation, the Gartners warn.

They say the European Union's Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) directive and the Waste of Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) directive are just the first of many, and manufacturers had better wake up and smell the carbon emissions.

China has passed its own, more stringent version of RoHS which comes into effect on 1 March 2007. Japan has had a law in place since 2000 and passed amendments that came into effect on 1 July 2006. Gartner expects South Korea, Australia, China and California to be among the first to implement further 'green' legislation.

Meike Escherich, a principal research analyst at Gartner, said manufacturers should anticipate green concerns to avoid production problems, as more countries adopt such directives.

"Non-compliant components will be gradually removed from the global supply chain and force manufacturers to discontinue products that contain them," she burbled

Only 43 per cent of PC sales are affected by RoHS regulations. Some canny manufacturers ship only into the United States, the Middle-East and other non-European countries, where folk couldn't give two figs how green they are.

But, "Not far from now, 'non-green' parts will be assigned end-of-life status and green legislation will come to impact every single PC manufacturer," Escherich postulates. µ

L'INQ
Gartner