Waste Management steps up e-cycling credentials

As more coverage of the health implications of electronic waste hit the media, Waste Management has stepped up its credentials for processing this stuff.

The company reports that its WM Recycle America unit has earned the Responsible Recycling (R2) and Recycling Industry Operating Standard (RIOS) certification for all eight of the facilities that handle those collection activities. R2/RIOS is one of the major certifications that covers, among other things, the way that e-waste is separated from traditional waste streams in order to keep things like lead, mercury and cadmium handled properly. That's important not just for health and environmental reasons, but for economic reasons: there is often value that can be mined out of old electronics components. The other big certification is e-Stewards, which is advocated by the Basel Action Network, which has been suspicious of the industry ties related to R2/RIOS.

Waste Management says that the certification gives it more certified facilities in the United States than any other company.

That's a big deal, since according to the 2011 Electronics Recycling Industry Survey (from industry association, Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries), the U.S. market for electronics recycling is now about $5 billion per year. More than 30,000 full-time workers processed more than 3.5 million tons of end-of-life electronics in 2010, compared with 1.8 million tons in 2009.

Does your company has an electronics recycling plan yet? If you work with Waste Management, that task probably just got easier to figure out.