R2 to get a home?

R2 to get a home?

July 15, 2010 -- In a letter to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), supporters of the Responsible Recycling (R2) Standard are banding together to create a housing entity for the standard that currently has none.

The letter, addressed to Mathy Stanislaus, assistant administrator of EPA's Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response, provides a history of the EPA's facilitation of the R2 Practices from its conception in 2006, through its publishing in 2008, and now to its current incarnation as a third-party certifiable standard. The 20 signatories of the letter further announce plans to create a "housing entity" for the R2 standard, and ask EPA to "[pass] the R2 torch" to the resultant entity — R2 Solutions.

There are almost two dozen signatories to the letter, including trade associations such as the Consumer Electronics Association and the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries, Inc. (ISRI), which posted the communication on its website. The list of signees also includes OEMs such as Dell and Hewlett-Packard; E-World Recyclers and TechTurn among processors; and re-use advocates and firms including WR3A and PC Rebuilders & Recyclers.

The creation of the housing entity would clear up some confusion among many observers as to the provenance of the R2 Standard — the most common being the incorrect assumption that the EPA is running it. Some have also confused ISRI's support of the standard as that the trade association is managing R2, which it does not.

"EPA has so much on its plate and never was intended as the long-term housing entity," said John Lingelbach, environmental mediator and facilitator of the R2 development process, to E-Scrap News. "Starting a new non-profit to house the R2 Practices seems the best way to promote the continued evolution of this voluntary environmental e-recycling standard. My prediction would be that this will happen sometime this calendar year."