Registration, Evaluation, Authorization of Chemicals Programme (REACH)

Schneider Electric’s commitment Available within Schneider Electric, the REACH program orchestrates the traceability of substances in products and industrial process. Objective REACH is a new European Community Regulation on chemicals and their safe use. It deals with the Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemical substances. The aim of REACH is to improve the protection of human health and the environment through the better and earlier identification of the intrinsic properties of chemical substances.

The REACH Regulation gives greater responsibility to industry to manage the risks from chemicals and to provide safety information on the substances. Manufacturers and importers will be required to gather and communicate information on the properties of their chemical substances.

Method
Since June 1st, 2007 Reach replaces and completes previous regulations and has the objective to list and evaluate most of the substances that are traded and used within the European Community.

Schneider Electric has set up a plan to become compliant with the REACH regulation.
This plan aims at obtaining an excellent visibility on all substances used in our products, packages and industrial processes and ensuring that all the legal requirements are met.

The main steps of this compliancy plan are:

• An inventory of substances and preparations used within our Group
• Making our suppliers for substances, preparations and articles aware of the important changes REACH implies
• The gathering of supplier’s information for us to prepare and process the data required for your own information.

All the actions Schneider Electric undertakes in the scope of this program are implemented with the objective of becoming compliant with this new Regulation but also with the objective of guaranteeing you no supply chain rupture.

For more detailed information on the REACH Regulation and implementation
http://ec.europa.eu/environment/chemicals/reach/reach_intro.htm,