The e-Stewards Story

e-Stewards is a global team of individuals, institutions, businesses, non-profit organizations, and governmental agencies upholding a safe, ethical, and globally responsible standard for e-waste recycling and refurbishment. We stop the export of illegal hazardous e-waste to developing nations and create a safe, green, and just world through sharing and using the principled and practical standard for electronics recycling and reuse.

Denver Face2Face Meeting 2013

The e-Stewards Standard is the product of hundreds of person-hours by multiple industry leaders in the recycling, asset disposition, certifications, health, safety, and the environment sectors.

History

In 2003, the Basel Action Network, a nonprofit dedicated to turning back the tide of toxins and waste to developing nations, launched the e-Stewards Pledge program. Over forty qualified electronics recyclers with one hundred locations across the US and Canada pledged to use only globally responsible, safe means to process electronic waste, more widely known as e-waste. BAN’s e-Stewards Pledge was the only program in North America to make real progress in establishing and ensuring e-waste recycling best practices for toxic materials, which included:

no disposal in landfills or incinerators
no prison labor
no export of toxics to poor communities
In 2006, BAN set aside efforts to transition the Pledge program into an independently audited certification program to focus on bigger, more holistic solutions. BAN wanted to create a voluntary e-waste recycling standard and partnered with the U.S. EPA-funded “Responsible Recycling” (R2) multi-stakeholder process.

After contributing significantly to this process for two and a half years, the environmental community ceased collaboration with R2 multi-stakeholder process. They could not in good conscience agree with the group and vote to field test a draft of the standard that would violate laws in importing countries, as well as allow toxic substances in solid waste disposal facilities.

Soon after R2 standard was tested, thirteen recyclers, the e-Stewards Founders, approached BAN offering to fund a new standard. They wanted a standard that would differentiate them and ban any export of toxic e-waste to developing nations. BAN took up the challenge.

BAN hired certification experts and brought in leaders from recycling, asset management, health, and safety sectors to create the e-Stewards Standard—the cleanest, most globally responsible standard for e-waste recycling.