Has anyone heard of the new Reach regulations yet?

[Adrian Yeo]

Phil

In a nut-shell, it requires all producers of chemicals etc to register their products and their uses. If these chemicals and their uses are not registered then they will not be able to continue production of said chemical!

Say for example, Roland did not register a particular solvent and its use in their ink, then after the deadline, they will no longer be able to produce that ink legally!

Should not effect the end users so much, but what peeps should be doing is sending similar letters that you have received to your suppliers.

There, thats about as clear as mud! 😀

[Adrian Yeo]

This link may be worth a look. I have a consultant comming in shortly to deal with this for my day job! I will pick her brains about the sign industry at the same time 😀 😀

http://www.hse.gov.uk/reach/

[Hugh Potter]

🙄 why? whatever next,

i use two, maybe three chemicals regularly….

glass cleaner,
app fluid (as a cleaner)
solvent thinners,

irregularly i might have to use paint (gasp) or even washing up liquid (shock horror)

so i now need waste my time and register my uses or not be able to use them?

this gov’t / H&S does my head in, i am perfectly able to waste my own time, without the need for their interference

[Adrian Yeo]

Hugh,

my main occupation (the one that actually pays the bills!! lol) is in surface engineering in the aerospace industry. In the last few year new eu regs have cost us literally hundreds of thousands of pounds! Compliance with the Solvent emissions directive alone involved either buying a 150K piece of kit or cease cleaning!

As for waste disposal, what last year cost us £50 per tonne disposal was quoted last week at £380 per tonne! 😮

Think the real game to be in is consultancy! Every new reg that appears seems to generate a whole new flood of ‘consultants’! 👿 👿

sorry, bit :offtopic: Rant over! lol

[Hugh Potter]

i know what you Mean Adrian, when i was last an employee, it was begining to drive me nuts (all the new legislations etc).

i’d done some cosh training, first aid, hygeine, etc, via a part time job, but wouldn’t admit to my bosses i’d got them or i know my workload woulda doubled! the would insist upon (on the surface at least) complying with every new regulation out there, iso etc. was fine for those in the ivory towers but us on the floor got the crappy end of it, constantly having to work using methods which were neither practical or or necessary.

still, jobs for the boys i guess, they need something to do to justify big fat salries, so why not have them dream up useless regulations which make industry look goood, but in reality acheive very little.

[Graeme Harrold]

As far as I can see, we probably fall into the downstream user category for surface cleaning product like isopropenol but would be a consumer of products like packaged solvent inks.

Its going to be in the suppliers best interests to ensure their products are registered and Im sure like COSHH you should be able to request a registration certificate from your supplier.

[Phill Fenton]

Just thought I would resurrect this thread as I fear this new legislation will have negative consequences for us all.

The environmental lobby would prefer that we all live in the stone age and use "natural" renewable resources.

My worry is that the Reach legislation will result in manufacturers being pressured into using alternatives that are more "environmentaly friendly" but less capable of doing the job of the chemicals they are replacing.

We have already seen in the automotive paint industry the outlawing of products that produced perfect paint finishes on cars. Now manufacturers are forced to use non solvent water based paints that are inferior. The end result is that the customer (you and I ) buys a car with an inferior paint finish today to what we would have got 10 years ago.

I suspect that many of the chemicals used in Vinyls, plastics and inks will have to be substituted for alternative chemicals that are less capable but more "environmentaly friendly" than before.

I fear the result will be we (the signmakers) will be forced to accept inferior products such as vinyls , inks and plastics.

i.e Vinyls that are perform less well in terms of durability and bonding as well as more prone to shrinkage. Inks that fade quicker and plastics that are more brittle less durable and more prone to fading.

It’s all well and good introducing legislation that supposedly "saves the planet" – but what about the detrimental effect on the products that are made as a result of complying with these new regulations.

[Stuart Flynn]

Phill I agree with your comments regarding REACH and its poxy regulations.
It is in truth, another cash cow for the EU and yet another ‘body’ set-up to charge people, yet again, for materials already certified.
The costs involved in registering the products with the REACH group is extortion. This is leading to many manufacturers dropping products from their ranges.
For some materials, we used to have a choice of 5 suppliers to choose from but now we have a selection of 2 or even 1 in some cases.

As an ink manufacturer this is making it increasingly difficult to continue using certain products without them changing every five minutes.
Ink manufacturers, particularly 3rd party ones, are being squeezed from every angle at present and REACH is making matters worse.

We do have choices though for what we can develop without compromising quality, it just takes longer and would cost more. Your worries concerning inferior products being sold into market will only be true if you see prices going down further. At this present time costs from chemical companies have risen quite considerably. We have instances where products such as solvents or additives have increased by 100%.
Profit margins like for most people, are a lot lower so costs will only go one way now and that isn’t down.

Funnily enough REACH is yet another rule which suits corporations more than the small/medium businesses. That isn’t exactly new these days is it?