"Green" makes enterprises more competitive

Export and foreign trade enterprises face the test of a series of standardized procedures such as foreign food safety standards and manufacturing material standards. Ms. Du Juan, the technical manager of the Restricted Substances Testing Service Department of SGS Standard Technical Service Co., Ltd., shared with many entrepreneurs how Chinese manufacturing enterprises are under the new international environmental protection regulations at the Jiaxing Station of the "Zhisheng Future Export Series Forum". Find your advantage by being "green" yourself.

The challenge of green economy

Du Juan: In the past, we traditionally looked at the quality of products, but now quality has a richer connotation. For example, how about the environmental performance of your products? What about the recycled materials used in your products? Because in fact, it is to encourage the recycling of materials, which will also reduce the consumption of resources.

For example, for electronic products, a more obvious requirement is that many of these energy consumptions are generated during the use stage. At this time, can the energy consumption of your products be reduced lower, so that you can reduce Some consumption of resources. In addition to the continuous release of requirements, for some possible, even if there are no obvious regulatory requirements, but there will be some potentially affected products, some measures such as recalls will be implemented.

In addition to some actions of the government, we will also have many non-governmental organizations, NGOs, they will spontaneously exert certain pressure on some production enterprises and the government, because their starting point is more to protect consumption interests of the people.

From a global perspective, we say that some very strict laws and regulations have been promulgated one after another. The EU is relatively advanced in the green requirements of products, and the management requirements of its own framework are also very strict and sound. We will see requirements for the management of chemicals, requirements specifically for electronic products, and requirements for food contact materials.

The United States also has stricter requirements on the environmental protection of products. For example, the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act, which was launched, has put forward very strict requirements for some products used by children. In California, when companies put their products on the California market, they have to face a huge amount of chemical substance requirements, with more than a thousand chemical substances, which is a relatively strict and complex project requirement.

We said that in addition to the traditional main export markets of the European Union and the United States, in fact, in recent years, because our economy is also developing continuously, we will also issue some of our own requirements in China. For example, we are also required to export electronic products in China, and there are also certification requirements recently. In this way, in fact, we will see that after the EU launched RoHs in 2006, we saw that these environmental protection regulations have a great influence. In 2006, the EU first introduced RoHS, and in 2007, we also began to implement our own RoHS , the ones that have been launched so far and those that are planned to be launched, basically cover most of the destination countries of our product exports, which will become a common requirement for products.

So at the beginning, we called RoHS a technical barrier, because the export of electronic products in our country was affected to a certain extent after the introduction of RoHS. After that, our own management ability has been greatly improved. Therefore, when the more complicated REACH is launched later, our enterprise becomes less panicked than before.

According to a survey released by the State Administration of Quality Supervision, in 2010, foreign technology trade measures caused Chinese enterprises to lose more than 50 billion US dollars in direct export trade throughout the year. In other words, many companies have been affected by exports without knowing it. At this point we can see the ratio. The largest number is the European Union, followed by the United States, which together account for more than half of the total.

We all know that the European Union has many member states, 27 member states, and each country executes the law independently. Through this RAPEX system, it can be ensured that if the product is found to be problematic when it is enforced by the United Kingdom, the information will be quickly circulated in the 27 EU member states through such a system. In this way, other countries can detect this potential threat as early as possible. But this has a great impact on exporting companies. If your products are found to be faulty in one country, you may receive fines from more countries.

This system will publish its statistical results of the previous year around April each year. It will count the sources of some problematic products it finds, and what are the problems of these problematic products, which will have some impact on consumers and damage.

We will also see a figure that from 2011 the number of notifications for environmental risks tripled from 2010. This environmental risk includes chemical pollution and carbon dioxide emissions. That is to say, in recent years, on the one hand, there has been continuous attention to chemical substances, and on the other hand, more attention has been devoted to energy conservation and emission reduction.

What we saw earlier is some official attitudes and some law enforcement information, what kind of situation do we see consumers in Europe? When our products are exported, we are willing to put some environmental protection labels on the products, such as SGS certification.

In fact, in a survey of consumers organized by an organization, more than half of them will pay more attention to the impact of its products on the environment and society after the survey. 64% of them would say that choosing eco-friendly products makes them feel better, and we actually have a similar experience.

We briefly summarize the current status and trends of environmental protection. As our economic development level is getting higher and higher, in fact, consumers are good, and they will tend to some higher requirements for environmental protection. There is a troublesome place in this area. In fact, different countries have separate legislation. At this time, when exporting products, you must consider your different target markets, and then carry out targeted management.

It is more obvious in RoHS, the environmental protection regulations of one country may be imitated by many countries. After the introduction of EU RoHS, many countries have now introduced their own RoHS. So at this time, we will be affected by more of these target markets. This will be more troublesome, that is, even in the same region and country, the same product will face multiple regulatory requirements, which need to be complied with at the same time. That is to say, when your product is exported, if it may be one, two or three, it is possible to label the product with a qualified label after these three items are completed, so for enterprises, it is difficult to confirm the product conformity. Increased.

Green Management

After reading the green economy challenges we are facing, we would like to briefly share with you some information about green management and our current information.

Let's take a look at the chemical substance first, this requirement, for enterprises, you want to tell your buyers that my products are green and environmentally friendly, there are really quite a lot. It can be seen that there are many, in addition to the enterprise itself to meet the buyer's requirements, to consider a lot of regulatory requirements.

In the field of chemical substances, we must talk about the EU's REACH requirements, which are aimed at almost all products in Europe, whether you are electronic products, clothing, textiles, or some such as toys and furniture. Whenever chemicals are used in your products, there are some implications of these requirements to consider.

For products, some of the complicated work of REACH lies in the positioning of products. Different products have different requirements in REACH regulations. For the most common, electronic products and textiles belong to the category of articles, and for such products, these regulations put forward a lot of requirements. The impact is relatively large, one is the SVHC in the product, which is selected by the EU through a strict selection system, including the substances of concern, and how well do you know the use of the product in the enterprise. There are also some harmful substances, whether the enterprise has used it, and whether it has met the requirements it puts forward. A point to pay special attention to, the current management of SVHC is a product for enterprises.

SVHC, we say that on the one hand, its calculations are very complicated, and on the other hand, its substances change very fast. There were also 2 batches in 2012, so that 138 substances have been put into its entire list. Common plasticizers and flame retardants are all in this list.

This time is not determined once, it will be updated every year, and it will be updated more than twice a year. This year, it is expected that the ninth batch of land substances will be released soon next month, so that I can ensure that my information is updated in time after the company's investigation is completed. So far, we currently have 138 items. After the change in June, the company needs to reconfirm whether the product can meet this requirement.

In addition to SVHC, there is another strict rule in Europe, that is, your products, some of which are harmful substances can not be used, which is reflected in the REACH restriction requirements, there is a special, such as toys that do not Plasticizers can be used to keep these toys safe for children. For example, some products that have long-term contact with the skin, such as watches, earrings, and mobile phones, should not use excessive amounts of nickel, because nickel can easily cause allergic reactions in people. In this way, when the product is confirmed, it also needs to look at more than 1,000 substances in total. Although there are only 63 items, it contains more than 1,000 substances. This amount is very complicated.

We said that even if we have been doing RoHS for so many years, we should pay special attention this year, because there is a new version of RoHS, 2.0 has been announced, and the number of products has increased, and the eight categories have become eleven categories. In addition to these six items, it will be officially decided by April next year. At this time, we need to pay attention to the changes in these needs. And the finished products should also be affixed with the CE mark. For enterprises, the requirement is actually that although RoHS is still RoHS, there are more requirements.

We say that the EU's RoHS and REACH are typical products for chemical management, and Europe has always had requirements for products after disposal, because the WEEE directive was issued together with RoHS. Recently, WEEE has also been revised to ensure that the recovery rate of your products reaches a certain target. For example, if you are a large household appliance, you need to achieve 80% recycling. At this time, enterprises need to be very careful when selecting materials for their products.

For recycling and energy consumption, Europe will have more specific requirements, that is, ERP instructions. It was originally called EUP energy-consuming products, and later it was updated to ERP, which is energy-consuming products. At this time, through such a directive, it is hoped that enterprises can improve the efficient use of energy and reduce the impact of products on the environment when designing. In order to guide the product to better meet its requirements, a special implementation directive is issued for some specific products.

I have read the section on hazardous substances and recycling earlier. Energy saving and emission reduction are also the parts that many companies are currently paying attention to. We say that the pressure on energy conservation and emission reduction lies in high-energy-consumption enterprises and in the government. The same is true for the manufacturing industry. In fact, energy saving not only requires investment, but also can help reduce the energy expenditure of enterprises. In fact, according to our calculations, enterprises can effectively achieve environmental benefits, management benefits and economic benefits through energy conservation and emission reduction. Not a conflicting part. It just depends on how the company conducts this piece of work.

In the field of green management, in fact, many companies have some best practices. The most important thing is that many of our companies now have very good design capabilities, and these requirements are taken into account in the product design stage. This is also very important. Our products are not qualified, and the detection is the most direct. But in addition to testing, companies can actually establish a quality management system to improve the continuous stability and effectiveness of the product.

We also take a look at the best practices in these industries. This is very important. What is our positioning? Our target customers? Where is the target market? Find our market and customers, look at our products, what kind of products do you want to supply to customers? After the positioning is completed, the internal standards of the enterprise must keep up. When developing, it is necessary to introduce such a link, procurement, production, and the entire process. The enterprise also needs to do a good job in this part.

Let's take a look at a few simple examples. In 2007, a toy company recalled 967,000 products because of excessive lead content. What is the reason? Suppliers change materials, which is quite common in the industry. We especially need to establish an effective mechanism to prevent changes in the management of changes. In 2008, there was a factory in Dongguan. The reason was that there was a problem with the raw materials. This also reminded us that you are also necessary for the factory inspection of the final product, but only the factory inspection is not enough.