The electronics industry has made significant progress in identifying, characterizing, prioritizing, reducing, and ultimately eliminating many harmful chemicals from its products. With considerable success addressing product-related chemicals, the industry has expanded its attention to manufacturing process chemicals in the supply chain to better protect the health of workers and their communities. Responsible chemical management across the value chain requires holistic and systematic management of chemical safety risks, including facility-level environmental, health and safety practices with a greater focus on hazard identification, worker engagement, and occupational health.
RBA Code of Conduct
Protecting workers and communities from hazardous exposures to harmful chemicals has been a core component of the RBA Code of Conduct and Validated Assessment Program (VAP) since their inception. The RBA requires compliance to a strict set of standards in its Code of Conduct, but also provides resources to conduct further risk analysis and, when necessary, intervention.
Learn about the Responsible Environment Initiative to see how the RBA supports the industry in assessing supply chains through the lens of OECD-aligned due diligence.
Partnerships
The RBA joined the Clean Electronics Production Network (CEPN), facilitated by Green America. This multi-stakeholder effort includes participants from the academic, government, NGO and business communities. As partners, the RBA and CEPN are working to develop and scale effective monitoring and control systems to prevent worker exposure to harmful chemicals by empowering and engaging workers, tracking and measuring exposure, finding safer substitutions where feasible, and enabling faster, easier process chemicals reporting. Several RBA member companies are also participating directly in the CEPN.
All of our chemical management work has benefited from significant feedback from well-respected NGOs and is being conducted in collaboration with civil society organizations. We recognize there is still much work to do around the safe and sustainable consumption of chemicals. The RBA and its members are committed to working with stakeholder partners to make meaningful progress on this important issue.
