‘Cancel the Cadmium’ – Promoting the Use of more Sustainable Alloys
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Johnson Matthey is actively promoting the use of cadmium free brazing alloys.
Johnson Matthey has sold brazing alloys containing cadmium since the early 1930s. Cadmium was originally added to the alloys to help them flow better and lower the melting point. But alloys containing cadmium present health and safety risks in use and are toxic to the environment. Fortunately, acceptable cadmium free alternatives are now available.
Given the increasing concerns about health and safety and environmental toxicity, legislation such as EU directives and REACH and our product stewardship commitments, the decision was made to eliminate cadmium alloys from our range and promote safer alternatives. So we began an initiative to persuade our customers to switch to cadmium free alloys. Whilst we had only around 200 direct customers for cadmium containing alloys, there are many more end users who buy indirectly from distributors. We deployed a number of tools to communicate with customers and distributors, including direct contact, online communication, industry seminars, presentations, leaflets and cadmium free samples.
One potential difficulty was that cadmium free alloys contain more silver and are more expensive so we’ve worked hard across our sales, technical and marketing teams to communicate the health and safety and environmental benefits to persuade customers to change. Distribution staff are also enclosing a ‘Cancel the Cadmium’ leaflet with each delivery of cadmium containing alloy to reiterate the sustainability benefits.
Although some companies intend to continue with cadmium products, we are finding that most customers are responding to our message. We are now phasing out a product range which has the potential to affect the health of the people who use it and cause detrimental effects to the environment.