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.