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WEEE and RoHS at NovAtel
The European Economic Union’s Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) directive is aimed at minimizing the impacts of electrical and electronic equipment on the environment by designing products with recycling in mind and encouraging reuse, recycling and recovery of WEEE. The WEEE directive applies to a huge range of electrical equipment, including NovAtel products, and will be enforced by European law starting August 15, 2005. In conjunction with the EEU’s WEEE directive is the related Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) directive. The aim of this directive is to reduce the hazardous materials content in electronic products. Specifically, it bans electronic equipment from being sold in Europe after July 1, 2006 if it contains more than trace levels of lead, hexavalent chromium, cadmium, mercury or certain brominated flame-retardants. NovAtel’s RoleNovAtel supports both these initiatives and has already taken steps to address their requirements. Where necessary, our products are labeled with the following WEEE mark.
This is a reminder to our users to return their equipment to their dealer or a recycling facility at the end of its life. For products not labeled with the WEEE mark, the product serial number can be used to determine the date of manufacture for recycling purposes, as detailed further below. Additionally, NovAtel will soon provide component and material information for our products for use by recycling facilities. We are also working hard towards meeting RoHS requirements ahead of the deadline for implementation. In fact, we have already introduced one of the industry’s first RoHS compliant products, our new GPS-702L antenna.NovAtel will be modifying its complete product line to ensure RoHS compliance. Our customers will be notified of the status of each product as the July 1, 2006 timeline approaches. Once templates and concrete guidelines have been established, RoHS declarations will also be made available for compliant products. Date of ManufactureTo assist with recycling efforts, NovAtel labels many of its products with the date the product was manufactured. To determine the date of manufacture, locate the product serial number, an 11-character string starting with three letters that can be found on a label on the product itself. The fourth and fifth characters of the serial number are the last two digits of the year of manufacture. The sixth and seventh characters are the week of the year of manufacture, with week 1 starting the first Monday of the year. |
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