From: Roberto Pasos [mailto:[email protected]] IEEE Product Safety Engineering Society Santa Clara Valley Chapter Meeting Date: Tuesday, September 28, 2010 Dinner: 5:30 – 6:45 p.m. Socialize with your colleagues and tonight’s speaker at: El Torito Mexican Restaurant, 2950 Lakeside Drive, Santa Clara, CA 95054, (408-727-4426) -- just two blocks north of the meeting site. No RSVP required. 7:00 – 8:30 p.m: Presentation Topic: What’s in your electronic product, where does it come from, and why should a Product Safety Engineer be concerned? Three trends make mineral sourcing an issue of potentially compelling interest to product safety engineers. First, many more minerals are used today in manufacturing electronics than just a couple of decades ago. For example, Intel estimates that, whereas computer chips contained 11 mineral-derived elements in the 1980s, potentially up to 60 elements will be used in coming years. Second, the downstream manufacturer is being held increasingly accountable for the traceability and regulation of materials in his product. Such traceability has commonly been non-existent for many complex electronic products. Section 1502 of the Dodd-Frank Wall St. Reform and Consumer Protection Act, signed into law on July 21, 2010, will require U.S. public companies to disclosure the use of “conflict minerals,” such as tantalum >from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in manufacturing their products; and over 60 percent of tantalum used in the U.S. is used in capacitors. This law imposes a social responsibility on manufacturers, and adds to a growing international pattern of laws and regulations with environmental and public health and safety objectives. Finally, concern is growing in some quarters about the availability, pricing, and sourcing of minerals (some of which are difficult to replace in certain electronic applications) as global demand rises, the grade of mineral deposits decline over time, and competitors such as China threaten to “lock-up” supplies of rare earth minerals. Because earlier material concerns have risen through the need to comply with EHS regulations such as the RoHS, WEEE, and REACH directives in the European Union, product safety engineers are as well placed as any professionals in the electronics industry to take on a key company-wide coordinating role to help their companies and industry remain profitable and resilient in the face of these trends. Speaker and Company: Rick Row is currently consulting on energy efficiency and low-carbon energy generation and use, and on compliance with environmental regulations. From 2007 to 2009, he was the Executive Director of Sustainable Silicon Valley, a non-profit that partners with businesses, governments, and other non-profit organizations in Silicon Valley to create a more sustainable future. Partners pledge to SSV to set their own CO2 reduction targets, report annually to SSV on their performance against their targets, and collaborate with SSV to share their CO2 reduction success stories publicly. For the previous five years, he managed Global Care, an environmental, health and safety (EHS) initiative, in the EHS Division at SEMI, a global industry association for companies providing equipment, materials and services used to manufacture semiconductors and related technologies. He also worked with EHS professionals in the industry to guide the industry's response to environmental regulations such as the European Union's WEEE and RoHS directives, and China's "China RoHS". Meeting Site: Applied Materials, Bowers Café, 3090 Bowers Ave, Santa Clara, CA 95054 (map: http://ewh.ieee.org/r6/scv/pses/directs.html Chair: Shirley Tarantino, [email protected] Vice-Chair: Ken Kapur, [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> Immediate Past Chair: Steve Baldwin, [email protected] Treasurer: Gary Eldridge, [email protected] Secretary: Roberto Pasos, [email protected] - This message is from the IEEE Product Safety Engineering Society emc-pstc discussion list. To post a message to the list, send your e-mail to <[email protected]> All emc-pstc postings are archived and searchable on the web at http://www.ieeecommunities.org/emc-pstc Graphics (in well-used formats), large files, etc. can be posted to that URL. Website: http://www.ieee-pses.org/ Instructions: http://listserv.ieee.org/request/user-guide.html List rules: http://www.ieee-pses.org/listrules.html For help, send mail to the list administrators: Scott Douglas <[email protected]> Mike Cantwell <[email protected]> For policy questions, send mail to: Jim Bacher <[email protected]> David Heald <[email protected]>
