SERI’S IMPACT MEASUREMENT REPORT

Showcasing Our Industry's Collective Impact on Global Electronics Sustainability 

SERI’s annual Impact Measurement Report showcases the positive impact of R2 Certified Facilities and our industry. In alignment with emerging ESG trends, this Impact Report provides valuable insights that demonstrate our collective impact, increase transparency in our industry, and highlight our roles in creating a more sustainable future for electronics. 

In 2026, R2 Certified Facilities will be asked to contribute basic operating metrics from 2025, such as the volumes of electronics received, reused, and recycled. This information will help demonstrate R2’s impact and showcase our industry’s collective contribution to global sustainability efforts. Rest assured: All data will be reported in aggregate to ensure confidentiality and protect your information.

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SERI: R2 CERTIFICATION LONG-TERM OUTCOME ANALYSIS

About this Report

Ecotone Analytics conducted this impact analysis to assess and project the social, health, and environmental benefits associated with SERI’s R2 Certification. R2 certified facilities help prevent environmental contamination and protect worker health by diverting used electronics from unsafe processing. By enforcing strict safety standards, they reduce exposure to hazardous substances and address both environmental and occupational health risks.

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Frequently Asked Questions

The Impact Measurement Report represents a step forward in demonstrating our industry's collective contribution to global sustainability. By gathering and analyzing industry-wide data, we can: 

  • Showcase the significant environmental and social impact of R2 Certified Facilities 
  • Provide transparent insights into our industry's sustainability practices 
  • Support facilities in meeting emerging ESG reporting requirements 
  • Strengthen our position as leaders in sustainable electronics recycling and reuse 
  • Drive continuous improvement through data-driven insights 

 

All data will be aggregated in the report to ensure complete confidentiality. Our reporting methodology is specifically designed to prevent the identification of individual facilities: 

  • Data will only be presented in aggregate form 
  • Statistical measures will be implemented to prevent reverse engineering of facility-specific information 
  • Regional or categorical data will only be reported when sample sizes are large enough to maintain anonymity 

As your trusted partner in certification, SERI maintains the highest standards of data security and confidentiality: 

  • All submitted data is protected under our comprehensive Privacy Policy 
  • We employ industry-standard security measures to protect your information 
  • Access to facility-specific data is strictly limited to essential personnel 
  • Data is stored in secure, encrypted systems 
  • SERI will never share or sell individual facility data 

Yes, participation in the Impact Measurement Report is a requirement under the SERI License Agreement for R2 Certification (see below). However, it is not an auditable requirement under the standard. Consequences may include:  

  • Non-reporting may be shared with relevant Certification Bodies  
  • Continued non-participation could result in termination of the license agreement by SERI 

We're committed to working with facilities to ensure they have everything they need for successful participation  

License Agreement Clause 4.6 SERI Data Gathering and Reporting.   

As part of the SERI R2 Program, SERI may collect and/or derive from Applicant or Applicant's Certification Body information about Applicant's R2 certification performance, and use such information in a deidentified and aggregated state in order to inform the industry and the public about the activities of R2 Certified organizations generally ("Anonymized Data"). Such statistical and other reports by SERI using Anonymized Data are intended for use in benchmarking, information gathering, and analysis relating to the electronics recycling and reuse industry in general. Applicant will fully cooperate in the collection of this data and agrees and consents to Anonymized Data being used by SERI pursuant to this Section 4.6, and agrees that in such form it is not considered the Confidential Information of Applicant.  

The R2 Impact Measurement data form will include both mandatory and optional questions. The mandatory ones will include the following:  

  • Weight or unit counts of incoming electronics, components, and materials from suppliers. 
  • Weight or unit counts of outgoing functional electronics and components sold for reuse. 
  • Weight or unit counts of outgoing electronics and components shipped for test and repair. 
  • Weight or unit counts of outgoing electronics, components, and materials shipped for materials recovery.  
  • Weight and number of data-bearing devices physically and logically sanitized in-house, at R2 Certified DSVs, and at non-R2 DSVs. 

Each of the mandatory questions will be split between R2 suppliers and non-R2 suppliers (with the exception of functional equipment, which doesn't differentiate).  

The optional questions will cover the following:  

  • Job impacts: FTE employed and the percentage of employees from communities that experience barriers to employment.  
  • Community benefits: Number of public drop-off points and weight collected, number of public collection events and weight collected, and number of electronics donated or sold at below-market rates to people in need.  
  • Major customer sectors: Identify the economic sectors your top three suppliers represent, in terms of units count/weight supplied and revenue.  
  • Open responses: You'll be able to describe any other notable contributions your facility made in 2025, as well as describe the main benefits customers can enjoy by doing business with R2 Certified facilities.  

While you can save your progress and return to the form later, once you have submitted the form there is no way to edit the submission. Please ensure that all data is correct before submitting. 

To ensure that you do not lose your progress, we recommend tracking your answers as you go, either by taking screenshots, printing pages to PDF, or using the Excel template provided.  

We ask that you attempt to separate out equipment, components, and materials received from R2 suppliers versus those received from non-R2 suppliers. This will help to avoid double-counting units or weight and provide a clearer picture of how R2 Facilities do business with each other. The R2 Facility Directory on the SERI website is a powerful tool you can use to determine R2 Certification status for any facility: Find An R2 Certified Facility – SERI.  

However, if you are unable to differentiate between R2 and non-R2 suppliers, please input your data into the non-R2 supplier fields only. 

We plan on issuing these global Impact Measurement Reports annually, so we ask that you consider making some adjustments to your inbound tracking software so that you could easily identify R2 and non-R2 suppliers in the future. 

No. As detailed in the SERI License Agreement for R2 Certification, SERI agrees to use the data "in a deidentified and aggregated state in order to inform the industry and the public about the activities of R2 Certified organizations generally," with the data "intended for use in benchmarking, information gathering, and analysis relating to the electronics recycling and reuse industry in general." The R2 Impact Measurement data request will not influence SERI's R2 license fee structure.  

We recognize some facilities crush data-bearing devices in-house before sending them to a DSV for shredding. In these instances, we ask that you report the weight of devices undergoing physical sanitation in either question 8a (physical sanitization in-house) or 8b/8c (physical sanitization by R2/non-R2 DSV). Do not put the same weight processed into both the in-house and DSV questions, to avoid double-counting.  

Which field to put your data into depends on whether the in-house crushing, alone, satisfies the data sanitization criteria laid out in Appendix B-Data Sanitization. Specifically, if the in-house crushing satisfies the requirements in Appendix B(7)(a-c), then you should include the weight in question 8a; otherwise, please report that weight as sent to a DSV for sanitization (questions 8b or 8c).  For example, in Table 1 of Appendix B, crushing solid-state storage such as an SSD, mobile phone, or tablet with a crusher designed to destroy chip sets would satisfy the requirements of Table 1 for that type of data device and should be counted as being processed in-house. However, for a magnetic hard disk drive, the Table 1 requirement is degauss and crush, so crushing alone for a hard disk drive would not satisfy the requirements of Table 1 and should be counted as weight sent to a DSV for sanitization.

Questions 1 and 2 refer to everything coming in the door of your R2 Facility (or, for brokers, everything they take control of). This includes what you receive from public drop-offs, public collection events, shipments sent to you from clients, items your team picks up from client sites and brings to your facility, electronics purchased from industry peers, or any other method in which electronic equipment, components, and materials are sourced by your facility. In this way, we're using an expansive definition of the word "supplier" to accommodate all the different collection and material sourcing models throughout the industry.  

If you're an active R2 Facility, then you receive something, so you should not input zero data for Questions 1 or 2, because that would indicate that your facility took in no electronics, components, or materials throughout the year. 

Let's look at several examples to illustrate:  

Scenario 1: An extended producer responsibility program collects electronics from the public at various drop-off sites. Those electronics are sent to your facility for processing. You should record those incoming electronics under Question 2 for non-R2 suppliers. 

Scenario 2: A partner R2 Facility organizes a series of public collection events. That R2 Facility doesn't have the expertise to handle certain types of collected electronics, so it ships those to your R2 Facility for processing. You should record those incoming electronics under Question 1 for R2 suppliers.  

Scenario 3: Your drivers go out and pick-up computers from a large financial institution client doing an IT refresh project. You should record those electronics under Question 2 for non-R2 suppliers.  

Scenario 4: An R2 certified ITAD facility sends your R2 Facility its end-of-life equipment for recycling. You should record those electronics under Question 1 for R2 suppliers. 

Facilities certified to Appendix F-Brokering should fill out the mandatory questions (Questions 1-2, 3-7, and 8-9), even if they do not physically receive or process equipment at a facility. Consider the "Incoming supplies" questions to relate to the products you're taking control of, regardless of whether you're purchasing or charging to manage the equipment, components, and materials. Consider the "Outgoing shipments" questions to relate to the equipment, components, and materials you're selling and/or delivering to buyers or downstream vendors (DSVs). Brokers also should report any equipment or components containing data that will be sanitized by a DSV in questions 8b-c and/or 9b-c, putting "0" in questions 8a and 9a. 

Let's look at a couple examples to illustrate:  

Scenario 1: A broker purchased 2,155 mobile phones from a non-R2 supplier and then resold them to an R2 Facility for data sanitization, test, and repair. In this example, the broker has the unit count but not an estimated weight for the mobile phones. The broker should input "2,155" for unit count for mobile phones under Question 2 (received from non-R2 suppliers), input "2,155" for unit count for mobile phones under Question 4 (Test and Repair-Shipped to R2 Certified DSV) and input "2155" under Question 9b (send to R2 DSV for logical data sanitization).  

Scenario 2: A broker takes control of a total of 18,593 kilograms of e-plastics supplied by multiple R2 Certified Facilities and then directs them to a non-R2 plastics reclaimer for materials recovery. The broker should input 18,593 kilograms of "Commodities/scrap: Plastics" under Question 1 (Received from R2 suppliers), 18,593 kilograms of "Commodities/scrap: Plastics" under Question 7 (Materials Recovery-Shipped to non-R2 DSVs), and then put zeroes in Questions 8 and 9.  

Questions 6 and 7 both concern equipment, components, and materials sent downstream for "materials recovery," which refers to the recycling of end-of-life equipment, components, and materials. These questions are intended only for equipment, components, and materials that will be manually dismantled or mechanically shredded and separated  as part of a process to recover the commodities (metal, glass, plastic, etc.) within them for use in the manufacturing of new products. "Materials recovery" does not refer to harvesting of components, such as memory or processors, for their reuse in different electronic devices – this type of parts harvesting is considered a reuse activity, not materials recovery.  Here's an example to illustrate: An R2 Facility dismantles desktop computers, removing the power supplies, fans, drives, memory, processors, circuit boards, heat sinks, batteries, cases, and other components. These are placed in separate gaylords and eventually shipped to a network of downstream vendors, with their final destination being recovery of metals or other materials by downstream recycling operations. This activity is referred to in the R2 Standard as materials recovery, and the R2 Facility should report the weights (or less likely, the unit count) in questions 6 and/or 7.  

Here's a different example: An R2 certified ITAD facility harvests CPUs and RAM that are capable of reuse with the intention of selling them to a DSV for testing/repair and reuse. But the rest of the computer components are dismantled or shredded so the metals and plastics can be recovered. The R2 Facility should report the CPU and RAM harvested in questions 4 and/or 5 and the downstream shipment of the rest of the computer components and materials as destined for materials recovery, or recycling, under questions 6 and 7.

Questions 6 and 7 concern the downstream shipments of not just whole equipment or components for materials recovery but also of material streams produced by dismantling and/or shredding electronics. This means if an R2 Facility dismantles and shreds devices and produces gaylords of different types of materials, such as various grades of circuit boards, copper wires and cables, steel casings, punched or shredded HDDs, shredded nonferrous metals, shredded ferrous metals, shredded plastics, etc., then the downstream shipments of those gaylords must be captured by questions 6 and/or 7 for materials recovery.  

Here are a couple of examples to help illustrate:  

  1. An R2 certified facility receives gaylords of mixed electronics. It does not have the capabilities to safely and effectively dismantle LCD display devices, so it aggregates and then ships them as whole units to an R2 DSV for dismantling. That downstream shipment should be reported in question 6.  
  1. The R2 Facility receiving whole, end-of-life LCD display devices breaks them down, removing mercury-containing lamps and separating different materials for recycling. The facility then ships the different materials to a variety of final destinations, such as smelters, mercury retort facilities, and other processors. Those outbound shipments should be reported in questions 6 and/or 7.  
  1. An R2 Facility processes low-grade, end-of-life electronics in a shredding and separation system, which produces ferrous metals, nonferrous metals, circuit boards, and plastics. Those outputs are shipped to various DSVs, some of which conduct final recycling of the metals and some of which broker shipments to recycling processors. The weight of those outbound shipments should all be recorded in questions 6 and/or 7.  

An R2 Facility's total incoming units/weights reported in questions 1-2 should roughly approximate the total outgoing units/weights reported in questions 3-7. The exceptions are when the facility is actively storing material and building onsite inventory or clearing out material and reducing its inventory, as well as in situations when a processing lag pushes outbound shipments into the following calendar year.

If your facility's initial certification date is on or after Dec. 1, 2025, you are not required to fill out the Impact Measurement form this year. If you would like to familiarize yourself with the reporting requirements to prepare for next year's reporting, you can check out the resources linked above. 

If your facility was certified before Dec.1, 2025, you are required to submit the report. Facilities that had periods in 2025 during which they were not yet certified or had suspended certificates should, to the best of their abilities, fill out the form with full-year data as if they were certified throughout 2025.

The R2 Standard requires that when an R2 Certified facility takes control of data-bearing devices, the data on those devices must be sanitized by either the R2 Facility or a downstream vendor. For that reason, in the Impact Measurement form, data-bearing devices reported as received by an R2 Facility from any source in Questions 1 and/or 2 must also be reflected in data sanitization Questions 8-9.  

Let's look at a couple of examples:  

Mobile phones logically and physically sanitized: An R2 Facility received 10,238 mobile phones from a non-R2 supplier. Of those, the R2 Facility was able to logically sanitize and test/repair 8,235 of them in-house, selling them as functional electronics. The remaining 2,003 were not capable of reuse and deemed end-of-life and were sent to an R2 Certified DSV for physical sanitization and materials recovery. Those 2,003 phones were estimated to weigh 160 kilograms using the conversion formula provided in the form (0.08 kg/unit).  

Here's how the facility would input the data: First, on page 1, the facility would select kilograms as the unit of measure. To account for the receiving of the phones, this facility would input "10,238" under "Mobile phones-Unit Count" in Question 2 (non-R2 supplier). To track the outbound shipments, the facility would put "8,235" under "Mobile phones-Unit Count" in Question 3 (Outgoing Shipments-Reuse) and "160" under "Mobile phones-Weight" in Question 6 (Materials Recovery-Shipped to R2 Certified DSV). Finally, to account for the required data sanitization activities, the facility would put "160" in Question 8b (Weight sent to R2 DSV for physical sanitization) and "8,235" in Question 9a (logically sanitized in-house).  

HDDs sent downstream for physical sanitization: An R2 Facility collects 10,000 pounds of desktop PC towers from a non-R2 supplier. Let's say the facility dismantles the towers and ships the different components/materials to DSVs for materials recovery. As part of that process, the facility removes 975 pounds of HDDs and sends them to an R2 Certified DSV for physical sanitization and materials recovery.  

Here's how the facility would input the data: First, the facility would select "pounds" as the unit of weight on page 1. To account for the receiving of the desktop PCs, the facility would input "10,000" under "Desktop PCs-Weight" in Question 2 (Received from non-R2 suppliers). To account for outbound shipments, the facility would then need to input all of the resulting components/materials recovered from the PC (ferrous, circuit boards, aluminum, plastics, components removed for recycling, etc.) under the applicable category fields in Questions 6 and 7, depending on whether they went to R2 or non-R2 DSVs; in terms of the data-bearing devices, specifically, they would be recorded as "975" under "Components Removed for Recycling-Weight" in Question 6 (Materials Recovery-Shipped to R2 Certified DSVs).  

Then, the account for the data sanitization activities that took place, the facility would input "975" under Question 8b (Weight sent to R2 DSV for physical sanitization). This 975 only includes the data-bearing components, which were the HDDs. The facility WOULD NOT include the weight of other components (CPUs, power supplies, etc.) or materials (aluminum, ferrous, plastics, etc.) under Question 8. Although these components and materials have been processed for materials recovery, they were not data-bearing components, so the "physical data sanitization" process was not used.  

SERI has limited human resources available to provide assistance, but will try and get back to you within a week of your question. In the meantime, we encourage you to reference to published resources have available on this page. 

For any additional questions, please contact us at impacthelp@sustainableelectronics.org

Timeline & Milestones 

January 2026

  • Webinar - How to fill out the data request
  • 2025 Data collection window opens

March 15, 2026

  • Data collection window closes to receive an individual facility report

May 2026

  • Final reporting deadline for all facilities 

Phase 2: Data Collection & Report Development (2025)

January - April 2025

  • 2024 Data Collection window

May - October 2025

November - December 2025

  • SERI 2024 Impact report published
  • Preparing for 2025 data request

Phase 1: Planning & Working Group Formation (July - December 2024)

July - December 2024

  • Working Group Meetings
  • Design data collection request in collaboration with working group

Impact Measurement Working Group

Puneet Gupta
(MG Environmental Consulting)

Cole Lowe
(HOBI International, Inc.)

Jason Teliszczak
(JT Environmental Consulting, Inc.)

Pulturu Reddy
(P.R.R.Reddy)

Chris Hodgkins
(EPC Global Solutions)

Laura Schmidt
(Celestica)

Carl Jackson
(Makor Solutions)

Aida Nutautas
(Illumynt)

Chris Regis
(Green Century Electronics Recycling)

Kent Taggart
(Mender)