Beyond Recycling: Reshaping Sustainability in Electronics

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

Environmental sustainability, especially for carbon-intensive industries like electronics manufacturing, means businesses are often plagued with various reporting requirements that don’t necessarily address the root problem.

To that end, SERI and the Global Electronics Association are teaming up to reshape sustainability in electronics. In this interview, Kelly Scanlon, lead sustainability strategist for the Association, and Corey Dehmey, CEO of SERI, discuss how their connection at last year’s eSummit has evolved into a powerful collaboration focused on circularity—not just reducing waste but rethinking it entirely. With the next eSummit in September 2025, both groups are leading the charge toward a more sustainable, tech-driven future for the industry.

Marcy LaRont: Kelly, let’s first talk about Evolve, a new initiative powered by the Global Electronics Association. How does it address sustainability for electronics?

Kelly Scanlon: Evolve is a brand, a resource hub, and even a strategy. The electronics industry is undergoing constant change and continual improvement. We’ve developed Evolve as the go-to resource for everything related to electronics and sustainability. It was launched in March. We also link to what SERI is doing, the upcoming eSummit, and to other organizations working on sustainability for electronics. We want to collaborate with all of them to provide meaningful resources for the industry.

LaRont: Tell me about the report you published when you launched Evolve.

Scanlon: The “Wired for Change” report captures the industry’s sentiment about sustainability. It highlights survey results indicating that sustainability for electronics is a top priority and that there is momentum toward achieving sustainability goals.

In addition to the recent sentiment report, we’ve learned from different groups in the electronics supply chain that there are several big, overarching pain points that prevent them from being more ambitious on sustainability—things like supply chain resilience roadblocks, natural resource and waste management hurdles, reporting and disclosure obligations, and workforce development challenges. We are here to help the whole industry with these pain points and high hurdles that prevent our industry from being more ambitious on sustainability.

To read the entire interview, which originally appeared in the July issue of PCB007 Magazine, click here.