Nonprofit Created to Administer R2 Standards for Electronics Recyclers

A group of industry and recycling players announced the creation Monday of R2 Solutions, a non-profit that will administer and oversee the Responsible Recycling (R2) standards for electronics recyclers. The R2 standards were developed by a group of industry and recycler stakeholders led by the EPA. The new outfit will promote the use of R2 standards, provide administrative support and help educate the public about responsible recycling, it said.

The CEA, Information Technology Industry Council (ITI) and the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI) welcomed the launch of R2 Solutions, but environmental groups, which walked out of the R2 process saying it didn’t do enough to stop exports to developing countries, said the R2 standards “still condones” such exports.

With electronics recycling becoming a critical part of the global information and communications technology industry, “it’s critical that a high set of standards is in place to ensure the development of a responsible industry,” said John Lingelbach, acting executive director of R2 Solutions. His organization will “create the home needed for the R2 standard to continue to develop and be adopted by the technology industry,” he said. The standard will be managed and further developed “openly and transparently,” Lingelbach said, and “there is no pay to play” requirement for recyclers to use R2.

Seed money for setting up R2 Solutions came from “stakeholders interested in seeing the R2 practices administered by an independent non-profit entity,” said a spokesman for the organization. They included electronics recyclers and their customers, he said. The organization will be “further developing and implementing a long-term funding strategy over the next few months,” it said. He did not say whether it included continued funding from industry players. Clare Lindsay of the EPA’s Office of Resource Conservation and Recovery did not respond by our deadline to a request to clarify whether the agency would have any role in how R2 Solutions operates and whether it had any say in its formation.

The R2 standard was developed via a “robust and transparent consensus-based process” by a group led by the EPA that included device makers, recyclers and environmental organizations, said Rick Goss, ITI vice president of environment and sustainability. The suggestion that environmental groups were a party to the final R2 standard is misleading, said Barbara Kyle, national coordinator of the Electronics TakeBack Coalition. Kyle’s group and the Basel Action Network walked out of the R2 process, saying the EPA had set the bar too low for exports. BAN has since developed its own e-Stewards electronics recycler certification program which has the backing of other environmental groups and some recyclers. Lingelbach said R2 is supported by government, industry and non-governmental organizations, a term used to refer to advocacy groups.

Green groups abandoned R2 after it became clear that “they were going to develop a standard that condoned exporting and they weren’t willing to change it,” said Kyle. The R2 standard “still condones exports” to developing countries, she said. “It is a standard that doesn’t address the most important issue with electronics recycling which is that these fake recyclers are exporting” electronics,” she said. Although R2 has language that says it permits only “legal exports,” there’s a “problem with that language,” she said. “It still allows recyclers to dump e-waste in developing nations, which is wrong."

The R2 standard reflects the “best thinking of what will work in the marketplace and what makes the most sense for the environment in the long term,” said Goss. The CEA supports use of third-party certification systems for electronics recycling, said Walter Alcorn, vice president of environmental affairs. The launch of R2 Solutions is a “major step toward making responsible electronics recycling business as usual” in the U.S. and abroad, he said. ISRI believes a “neutral, third-party” organization like R2 Solutions is a “more appropriate administrator” of R2, said President Robin Wiener.