Product end of life

EN14; STEV78, STEV79

Understanding the impact our products can have at the end of their life-cycle involves rigorous collaboration with and monitoring of our suppliers and of our own operations to control the chemical substances that go into our products (see Supply Chain Management for more on this). We publish information on the chemical content of our products on our website, and we also respond directly to the many detailed requests of our customers regarding chemical content. We are in compliance with all related legislation, which we track continuously.

In order to give greater visibility to our activities to reduce the environmental impact of our products, in 2000 we introduced our strategic 'Ecopack®' program, which labels those of our products that are compliant with the RoHS directive (see below).

European Union RoHS Directive 2002/95/EC

The RoHS Directive requires us to eliminate specific hazardous materials, the most critical of which for us is lead (Pb). The RoHS Directive comes into force on July 1, 2006. In line with our Decalogue target to be in compliance with new legislation at least one year before it is introduced, for more than two years now, ST has been in a position to issue a compliance certificate declaring that its lead-free products are RoHS compliant. This compliance has gradually been extended to all ST products manufactured in all of our production facilities, not just in Europe.

Today, more than 95% of our production is conducted in full compliance with RoHS. Any exceptions are for those customers in health and automotive sectors making products with specific safety-related applications (e.g. pacemakers, airbags) that are exempt from the directive. For more details on RoHS and the phasing out of lead, see our website.

EU proposed directive REACH

The proposed REACH (Registration, Evaluation and Authorization of Chemicals) directive will require us to strive to eliminate specific toxic substances from our products and production processes. ST fully supports REACH and we plan to be compliant well before the directive comes into force, both in our European sites and in the rest of our production and research facilities around the world. We are working in close partnership with other semiconductor companies on the identification and phasing out of the potentially harmful substances that we know to be concerned. In the specific case of PFOs, this substance is only used in critical applications in compliance with the EU directive for the marketing and use of PFOS. We will phase this substance out of non-critical applications by the end of 2006. For more details on REACH and our activities to prepare for it, see our website.

WEEE

EN15

As a supplier of components to the electronics industry (not manufacturers of electronic equipment), we are not directly affected by the European Directive 2002/96/EC Waste of Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE).