Articles
Recycling Industry Initiatives
By Larry Tibert, EHS Business Unit Manager
As industry embraces opportunities to lessen their environmental footprint through various recycling programs, the recycling industry finds itself facing new initiatives designed to ensure wastes are handled appropriately. There are currently three such accredited programs - RIOS, R2, and E-Stewards, all designed to deal with electronic waste.
RIOS (Recycling Industry Operating Standard) was developed by the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI). RIOS is an integrated management system standard that combines the management of quality, environmental and occupational health and safety into a single unified system. Developed specifically by and for the scrap recycling industry, RIOS provides a systematic framework for recycling facilities to achieve measurable continuous improvement in their management system performance.
R2 is an independent set of voluntary operational practices specific to electronics recycling. The practices were developed by the EPA with industry input. At the foundation of R2 is the requirement to develop an Environmental, Health and Safety Management System to plan and monitor its environmental, health and safety practices including the activities it undertakes to conform to R2 Practices. ISRI has adopted R2 into the RIOS certification program to provide a voluntary path for electronics recyclers to improve their facility operations and use RIOS as the tool to meet the EHSMS requirement in R2.
The final standard, currently under development, is the E-Steward Program developed by the Basel Action Network (BAN). The focus of this program is to ensure exports of electronic hazardous waste to developing countries are eliminated and replaced with producer responsibility and green design programs. BAN initially had worked with both RIOS and the EPA groups developing standards but chose to develop their own standard based on the principles of the Basel Convention.
The future will determine which standard will emerge as the one industry embraces. For those organizations that already have developed management systems that conform to ISO 9001, 14001 and 18001, meeting the requirements of any of these three initiatives should not be an overwhelming task.
