FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Over the years, the SERI team has been traveling around the globe, speaking, exhibiting and attending a wide range of conferences to provoke new thinking and encourage collaboration toward the goal of making electronics sustainable. Especially with our success collaborating with E-Waste World in Frankfurt Germany in 2023 and now again in 2024, the time felt right for SERI to host a conference of our own and align it with our whole-lifecycle approach to the mission. We’ll still speak and exhibit at other conferences, but our hope is that the Electronics Sustainability Summit will become the “can’t miss” event of the year for all stakeholders to collaborate on e-waste and sustainability.

Starting in 2024, the E-Reuse Conference is now the Electronics Sustainability Summit by SERI. But in spirit, the ERC will very much live on in the new conference, especially as SERI has contracted with Sarah Kim, the driving force behind the ERC, to join us in building the eSummit into something even more powerful for the industry. Both the short and long-term vision is to retain many of the elements of ERC that our attendees, exhibitors, speakers, and sponsors have come to expect from the conference over the years, including lots of great networking, a dynamic exhibit floor full of education and learning opportunities, and valuable thought-provoking content throughout the event, and build and expand the event from there.

It’s been an exciting 20 years since the first E-Reuse Conference was held in 2003, and as the industry has evolved and grown, so too has ERC. If the success of the combined ERC and E-Scrap Conferences has reinforced anything over the past few years, it’s that the industry needs a place where all stakeholders can gather, network, and learn from one another. ERC has successfully grown to become the premier conference for the electronics reuse industry, and at the same time, SERI has emerged as one of the world’s leading voices in electronics sustainability for our industry. We feel ERC is ready for its next evolution to become bigger and better for an even wider range of stakeholders, and with SERI’s vision and thinking, this is the next step to creating an even more powerful space for the entire industry to collaborate. We can’t wait to start this next chapter!

No! Though SERI is probably best known for the R2 Sustainable Electronics Reuse and Recycling Standard, our mission is much broader. Simply, SERI’s mission is to make electronics sustainable, and R2 is just one of the tools to getting there, along with a range of programs including an ESG Reporting Standard for Electronics, R2U, the Champions Program, ReThink, and others. This conference is about the bigger picture and all the ways of accomplishing the mission in collaboration.

The vision of the Electronics Sustainability Summit is to become the one conference that brings together the entire electronics industry around the goal of sustainability. We hope to expand the breadth of voices both as speakers and attendees to include increased perspectives from OEMs, regulators, sustainability experts, retail, academics, and customers. Like the 2023 E-Reuse Conference, the eSummit will focus on the electronics reuse and recycling phases of the value chain, with an increased focus on mobile. But we are taking a whole lifecycle approach to the eSummit and look to increase the visibility of topics like product design and innovation, the whole use phase including returns, repair, (in addition to reuse), and then end-of-life discussions.

Yes! One of the strengths of ERC is that attendees contribute to helping shape the topics for the conference agenda, and that will continue. In fact, the agenda suggestions are being collected now for 2024 and we look forward to seeing what’s on everyone’s minds this year! Suggestions will be accepted until May 31st, 2024.

Registration will open spring of 2024! Make sure you don’t miss any announcements or important information by signing up for our conference email blasts here.

Yes! We will continue to give companies, organizations, and academics an opportunity to educate attendees about their contributions and solutions toward driving electronics sustainability. Specific details will be announced in the coming months. Be sure to register to receive email conference updates here.

As SERI is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, the sponsorship opportunities may look a little different going forward, however, there will be opportunities to support the Summit and its goals of bringing the industry together through education and collaboration. Stay tuned for more details to come!

We understand how much many of our conference attendees use the app, both for the conference and throughout the year, and we will be using the same app for at least the 2024 Summit and hopefully beyond.