More than 50,000 tonnes, five times the weight of the Eiffel tower, is the gigantic amount of electrical and electronic equipment waste that comes from chargers for mobile phones, tablets and similar products alone. The European parliament says this must stop, and in the future, consumers will no longer have to battle with a tangled mess of cables, and the environment will be spared a huge amount of rubbish.
This outcome is identified in the directive on the harmonisation of the laws of the member states relating to the provision of radio equipment on the market which an overwhelming majority of MEPs voted for the reform in Strasbourg on 13 March 2014.
It was a long journey towards the decision to adopt universal chargers. Back in 2009, manufacturers wanted to introduce a uniform standard – at the time under European pressure. The industry planned to pre-empt a legislative initiative by the then European enterprise and industry commissioner Günter Verheugen. However, ultimately nothing came of the introduction of the micro USB standard which was planned for 2010 and which most companies had prepared themselves for. And so the situation remained that the IT industry still uses many different chargers, for simple mobile phones in particular.
"The seemingly endless running battle between producers and the EU is at an end: the universal charger is coming in 2017"
The European parliament has now lost patience with the various groups involved and their hesitation over a period of several years which is to the detriment of consumers and the environment. The seemingly endless running battle between producers and the EU is at an end: the universal charger is coming in 2017. The European commission will be working with manufacturers in the coming months to develop the most technically optimal format.
But the radio equipment directive is about more than the universal charger. It also primarily aims to avoid mutual interference caused by ever increasing numbers of radio equipment such as car door openers and baby monitors, to ensure that basic health and safety requirements are met, and to identify defective products quickly through efficient market surveillance and withdraw them from the market, for example through a central database for prominent groups of devices. Furthermore, the directive has been made simpler and clearer through modernisation and is now in line with similar directives and future potential use of frequencies. This will be of help to both supervisory authorities and Europe's SMEs.
Providing greater levels of consumer protection, efficient market surveillance but no unnecessary bureaucracy, the reform of the radio equipment directive is a done deal. With it, the European parliament is giving the starting signal to fully exploit the huge potential for innovation in radio applications. The member states still have two years to implement the rules into national law. Manufacturers then have a further year to prepare for the binding application of the new provisions. The universal charger should be on the market no later than 2017.