Electronic products sold in China will carry green or orange tags to inform customers whether they are environment-friendly or not, in a move to reduce electronic pollution.

A new set of regulations, seen as the Chinese version of the Restriction on the Use of Certain Hazardous Substances in Electrical and Electronic Equipment (RoHS) Directive, took effect on Thursday.

The new rules, issued by the Ministry of Information Industry (MII) and six other authorities last February, require domestic manufacturers to specify the names and content of poisonous and harmful materials used in product design and manufacture.

Products containing hazardous substances, including lead, mercury, cadmium and hexad chromium will be registered in a list, and manufacturers will be required to gradually replace or reduce the content of these substances.

Products that do not meet national or industrial standards should not be sold on the domestic market, the regulations said.

However, no timetable has yet been established, said MII official Yang Meng.

Violations of the regulations will be punished but no specific measures are mentioned.

Electronic products under the new rules refer to ten categories of products including home appliances, medical equipment, and telecommunications tools.

Products with the new tags will not be seen until late May as manufacturers have to clear up their inventory first, observers said.

Industry analysts said the new rules were likely to raise production costs as manufacturers have to replace or reduce the content of hazardous substances.

A senior official with Galanz, one of China's top home appliances manufacturers, predicted their production costs are likely to rise 20 percent to meet the requirements of the regulations.

The European Union introduced on July 1 new restrictions on hazardous substance content in electrical and electronic appliances, requiring a maximum concentration of 0.1 percent by weight of many environmentally hazardous substances such as lead and mercury that are used to produce electrical products.

The Chinese regulations are less specific and onerous than the EU rules but represent a first step by China to address the worsening electronic pollution issue.

Statistics show that China has more than one billion home appliances, 30 million of which are scrapped each year, representing a major threat to the country's environment.

Source: Xinhua