SERI is sponsoring a grant to provide 250 GPS trackers to R2 Certified facilities that sign up for the Green Tracking Service, an independent provider of GPS trackers. This grant will help R2 Certified facilities evaluate how GPS tracking might be used as an additional quality check when verifying their own downstream recycling chain information. SERI has no business nor financial relationship with Green Tracking Service and SERI will have no access to this information. SERI hopes this will alleviate any privacy concerns recyclers may have about specific information identified by the trackers being made public by SERI without their consent. The sole intent of this program is to provide R2 certified facilities with the opportunity to test the usefulness of GPS tracking in managing their own recycling chains.

It is important to note that while GPS tracking alone is not enough to qualify or verify downstream vendors, it may be considered as one effective component of a recycler’s overall due diligence program to monitor the recycling chain and verify that broken electronics and Focus Materials do not end up in unexpected places.

SERI has investigated the leads provided by prior GPS trackers that have passed through R2 Certified facilities. This has provided insight about the benefits and limitations of GPS tracking technology. While trackers can be useful in identifying the path of travel, GPS trackers can only identify the location of the tracker—not the context or details about how or why the tracker arrived there, nor what, if anything, it was attached to. This is why without further investigation to determine such key information, trackers alone cannot determine with finality the responsibility for perceived breakdowns in the recycling chain. SERI’s own investigations have concluded that GPS tracker data requires further information gathering in order to add to the scope and reliability of conclusions that can be reached based on GPS tracking information alone.

If concerns about downstream vendors are identified in the GPS tracking data, SERI encourages participants to fully investigate the concerns before drawing conclusions about their downstream vendors. When concerns are raised, R2 Certified participants may open an internal non-conformance, investigate to confirm the issue, seek to correct the perceived issue, and take corrective actions of their own to prevent a reoccurrence. If the downstream vendor in question is R2 certified, participants are encouraged to share their information with the downstream vendor’s Certification Body so those concerns can be further investigated.

R2 Facilities interested in benefiting from SERI’s GPS tracker grant can contact and engage with Green Tracking Service at info@grntrac.com or by calling +1 408 702 2155.