NERC in the News

R2 Finds a Home

Resource Recycling and E-Scrap News, October 2010

The Responsible Recycling (R2) Standard has been given a home by R2 Solutions, a new Colorado-registered non-profit organization. The announcement, made at the E-Scrap 2010 Conference last week in New Orleans, should settle confusion about the multi-stakeholder-developed standard, which was developed with facilitation by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

"We're very excited that this is moving forward," says John Lingelbach, currently serving as acting director. "The practices missing a home formed a void. This is a really important step."

R2 Solutions launches with a board of directors headed by Lingelbach, as well as John DeVillars, managing partner of BlueWave Capital; John Howard, independent public policy consultant and former Bush Administration Federal Environmental Executive; Pete Regan, the former CEO and chairman of ERM, Inc.; and Lynn Rubinstein, executive director of the Northeast Recycling Council.

"We have seed money for about six months, during which time we will put in place a funding strategy for operations moving forward," says Lingelbach.

Linglebach says that funding "is coming from a variety of sources, with different areas of interest, that wanted R2 to find a home — some from the recycling community, some from the customer community."

The announcement garnered widespread praise throughout the electronics recycling industry. "ISRI applauds the creation of R2 Solutions as a stand-alone, non-profit organization, whose sole purpose is to manage and sustainably-develop the R2 Practices in an open, transparent manner," says ISRI president Robin Wiener. "We firmly believe that a neutral, third-party organization such as R2 Solutions is a more appropriate administrator of the R2 Program going forward, and ISRI looks forward to its progress in advancing responsible electronics recycling globally."

"We want to provide our customers the most responsible, robust and value-added recycling services we can," says Jake Player, president of TechTurn. "R2 helps ensure our clients we're operating at the highest standards and the transparent process and R2 Solutions helps us continually improve our recycling processes."

Currently, 25 electronics recycling facilities have been R2 certified, including one outside the United States in Canada.