Certification standards

Can technology be used to better track flows of end-of-life electronics? Industry and government officials discussed that idea this week during a webinar produced by consulting firm TransparentPlanet LLC and the U.S.

Last week's Electronics Recycling Asia Conference in Singapore touched on the circular economy, industry certifications and the diverse systems in place to recover e-scrap in Southeast Asia. Running from the Nov. 10-13, the conference drew 138 attendees and attracted 18 exhibiting companies.

SERI has begun conducting surprise audits of R2-certified facilities, with auditors concentrating on downstream due diligence and other topics of concern.

Sustainable Electronics Recycling International (SERI), the Boulder, Colo.-based nonprofit organization managing the R2 e-scrap environmental standard, began conducting spot – or unannounced – audits of facilities in mid-August. So far, it has conducted about a dozen.

After closing and consolidating operations in North America and the U.K., the e-scrap business of Sims Metals Management has posted promising results.

Results from the recently completed 2015 fiscal year (FY), which ran from July 1, 2014 to June 30, 2015, show increased revenues from Sims' tightened global e-scrap operations. Revenues from the e-scrap wing of the company, Sims Recycling Solutions (SRS), totaled about $795 million in Australian dollars ($557 million in U.S. dollars).

The leader of Sims Recycling Solutions says the e-Stewards certification no longer makes business sense for the major electronics processor. He added that recent e-Stewards decisions on prison labor and CRT glass have started to "water down" the standard.

SRS, the e-scrap wing of publicly traded Sims Metal Management, had all nine of its U.S.

The e-Stewards certification of Materials Processing LLC has been withdrawn for one year following a $125,000 fine from Minnesota's Pollution Control Agency.

Materials Processing (MPC) was recently fined for stockpiling 2,500 tons of CRT glass in the St. Paul-Minneapolis metro area. Now, an investigation by e-Stewards has found the company was also using an undisclosed warehouse space in Philadelphia to store end-of-life electronics.

In a report assessing its progress on electronics stewardship, the federal government indicated it is moving forward on major studies in several e-scrap-related areas, including a look at how the e-Stewards and R2 standards are being implemented. The study on the effectiveness of industry certifications is mentioned in an update to the National Strategy for Electronics Stewardship (NSES), which was released earlier this week by the Interagency Task Force on Electronics Stew

In an interview with E-Scrap News, an executive at Arrow Value Recovery says the company will complete its global implementation of the e-Stewards standard at all of its facilities by 2015, and a spokesperson offers new insight on the special circumstances involved in certifying the company’s many locations. For the past three years, Arrow Electronics has aggressively entered the IT asset management and reverse logistics sector, building on its already successful electronic components and IT services offerings.

Multinational electronic components supplier Arrow Electronics has reached a three-year agreement with the Basel Action Network to certify all of Arrow's electronics recycling and IT asset recovery operations worldwide to the e-Stewards standard. The pilot program makes Arrow the first company with locations on multiple continents to bring the certification to all its operations.

The number of R2 certified facilities is booming, according to the latest tally of facilities from R2 Solutions. As of this week, 215 facilities have been certified to R2, both in the U.S. and abroad. This translates into 140 companies with at least one certified facility. By contrast, 31 firms with 71 facilities have certified to e-Stewards. A closer examination of the data reveals interesting patterns about firms' certification strategies.