Thursday, April 02, 2009

Europe - improving the efficiency of chargers for mobiles

Mobile chargers: the European Commission announces chargers harmonisation also for digital cameras and music players

During a debate at the European Parliament prompted by a number of questions tabled by Marco Cappato MEP and Marco Pannella MEP (Radicals/ALDE), yesterday evening the EU Commissioner Gunther Verheugen announced that the European Commission will work for the introduction of a standardised charger for mobile phones and all electronic appliances.

The Commissioner agreed with Cappato and Pannella's plea, whose aim is to avoid unnecessary costs for European consumers, who are obliged to replace chargers which still work, and for the environment because of the enormous quantity of waste generated. Verheugen also threatened that if the industry will not find a voluntary agreement by the end of April the European Commission will introduce a new specific legislation to harmonise the over 30 different kinds of charger currently on the European market.

The GSM Association (GSMA) is moving towards adopting a small USB charger as the standard across all models in use across the 27-nation European Union . This decision has to c ome into effect quickly to avoid further harm for the consumer and for wellbeing of the environment.

The issue concerns cell phones but also photo cameras, laptops, iPod and MP3 readers.

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