June 28, 2006 Caswell, UK -- Bookham has announced that it is fully compliant with the European Parliament's Restriction of the use of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) Directive, a claim confirmed by an external audit by BSi (British Standards Institute) Management Systems during an independent third-party assessment. BSi confirmed that Bookham had systems and processes in place delivering the necessary compliance ahead of the legal deadline of July 1, 2006.
The policies, procedures, and documentary evidence established by Bookham for RoHS compliance were audited by BSi as part of the company's TL9000/ISO9001:2000 and 14001:2004 approval assessments. The auditors identified a number of areas for particular praise, including the company's design and new product introduction initiative, its supply chain management, and its customer management and declaration.
The RoHS directive bans the use of certain hazardous substances, including lead, mercury, cadmium, hexavalent chromium, polybrominated biphenyls (PBB), and polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDE), in electrical and electronic equipment sold into Europe from July 1, 2006. In response to the directive, Bookham has been delivering RoHS-compliant versions of its products to customers since April of this year.
"Bookham is fully committed to environment protection and sustainable development and has set in place a comprehensive program for removing polluting and hazardous substances from all of its products," reports Reiner Breu, vice president of Quality & Reliability at Bookham. "RoHS compliance is an integral part of our environmental policies and procedures, and Bookham has worked with each of our suppliers to ensure the RoHS compliance of all our infeed components."