Have you ever purchased a new phone, radio or other electronic device and noticed all of the environmental labels on it?  Has anything ever said ‘RoHS Compliant’ – or maybe, simply, ‘RoHS,’ perhaps in front of a green leaf?  For those of you at electronica 2010, you may even see products marketed as environmentally-friendly.

Product environmental compliance has become very important for customers.  Some consumers take environmental impact into consideration before they’ll buy a product.  The trend is clear: consumers care.

Molex is primarily a component manufacturer.  Connectors and other components we manufacture are used in final products that are then sold to a consumer.  The packaging and labeling we use is discarded by our customer or the assembly shop, so the consumer never sees our labels.  But it’s important to share with our customers how our products meet certain environmental requirements.

The primary way we do this is via molex.com.  There is an environmental section for every single part Molex sells.  This section can include:

• EU ELV and RoHS status
• China RoHS label information
• REACH SVHC content
• Low-Halogen status

To further assist our customers, a tool was recently improved to allow our customers to generate a PDF with EU RoHS, EU REACH SVHC and Low-Halogen status for multiple part numbers.  This allows our customers to generate the documentation they require on their own, without needing to wait for Molex to create and provide the document.

We are also expanding the information included on our product labels for our customers.  These labels not only indicate EU ELV and RoHS status, but in the future will indicate if a product is Low-Halogen.  Even though consumers never see this label, it’s important to be clear about the environmental status to our customers.

Finally, Molex also outputs its environmental data in various ways depending on the customer needs.  Automotive customers use a common online database; other customers use industry-standard declaration tools that allow Molex to quickly provide the important data customers need.

While you’re at electronica 2010, look to see how companies are marketing their products.  Next time you buy an electronic device from a store, look to see what labels are on the item or packaging.  Now you know how Molex is contributing!