---
title: "The State of R2v3 Certification 2026 — Facility Counts, States, Appendices | ItemStage"
url: https://itemstage.com/resources/state-of-r2v3-2026
description: "Original analysis of the SERI R2v3 certified-facility directory, August 2026: 1,252 active facilities in 43 countries, 789 in the US across 687 companies. State-by-state counts, appendix distribution, and certification-body market share."
lang: en
---

Research · Original Data

# The State of R2v3 Certification, 2026

An original analysis of the public SERI R2 directory — every facility holding an active R2v3 certification worldwide, snapshotted August 2026. Free to cite with attribution.

Cite as: "The State of R2v3 Certification 2026," ItemStage/TetraCore analysis of the SERI R2 directory, August 2026. Link to this page.

1,252

facilities hold active R2v3 certification worldwide, in 43 countries

789

are in the United States — 63% of the global directory — across 687 companies

88%

of US facilities are certified by just two bodies: Perry Johnson (55%) and Amtivo (33%)

30%

of US facilities earned their first certification in 2024 or later

Geography

## Where the world's R2v3 facilities are.

The US dominates the directory; the next nine countries combined hold less than half the US count.

| Country | Active R2v3 facilities | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| United States | 789 | 63% |
| Canada | 80 | 6.4% |
| China | 78 | 6.2% |
| India | 46 | 3.7% |
| Australia | 32 | 2.6% |
| Japan | 28 | 2.2% |
| Singapore | 25 | 2.0% |
| United Arab Emirates | 24 | 1.9% |
| Mexico | 20 | 1.6% |
| South Korea | 15 | 1.2% |

| US state (top 15) | Facilities |
| --- | --- |
| Texas | 137 |
| California | 95 |
| Florida | 57 |
| Georgia | 45 |
| New York | 39 |
| Illinois | 39 |
| Ohio | 33 |
| Arizona | 29 |
| New Jersey | 27 |
| Pennsylvania | 25 |
| Virginia | 21 |
| Massachusetts | 20 |
| Minnesota | 20 |
| North Carolina | 17 |
| Michigan | 15 |

Texas alone holds 17% of US facilities — more than the bottom 35 states combined. The top six states (TX, CA, FL, GA, NY, IL) account for roughly half the national total.

Specializations

## What US facilities are certified to do.

R2v3 attaches process appendices to each certificate. The distribution shows what the industry actually is: a downstream-managed, data-sanitizing, test-and-repair business.

| Process appendix | US facilities | Share | Reading |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Appendix A — Downstream Recycling Chain | 763 | 97% | Near-universal: managing downstream vendors is effectively the baseline of R2v3. |
| Appendix C — Test & Repair | 634 | 80% | Four in five US facilities are certified to test and repair for reuse. |
| Appendix B — Logical Sanitization | 601 | 76% | Software-based data erasure under a documented, verified process. |
| Appendix B — Physical Sanitization | 388 | 49% | Shredding, degaussing, and other physical destruction. |
| Appendix E — Materials Recovery | 327 | 41% | Mechanical processing and commodity recovery. |
| Appendix F — Brokering | 73 | 9% | Buying and selling equipment without physical possession. |
| Appendix G — PV Modules | 28 | 4% | Solar panel processing — small today, growing with the first big decommissioning wave. |
| Appendix D — Specialty Electronics Reuse | 23 | 3% | The rarest specialization in the US directory. |

The core of the industry is the B + C combination: 609 US facilities — 77% — hold both a data-sanitization appendix (B) and Test & Repair (C). These are the operations that take in used IT assets, sanitize the data, and process the hardware for reuse: the classic ITAD profile. Serial-level tracking with documented evidence at every step is what those two appendices require an auditor to see.

Market structure

## Two certification bodies audit almost everyone.

| Certification body (US) | Facilities | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Perry Johnson Registrars | 433 | 55% |
| Amtivo | 261 | 33% |
| NSF | 39 | 5% |
| Intertek | 24 | 3% |
| Orion Registrar | 17 | 2% |
| NSAI | 15 | 2% |

The certification-audit market behind R2v3 is a near-duopoly: Perry Johnson Registrars and Amtivo together certify 88% of US facilities. The pattern holds worldwide — the same two bodies lead globally with 582 and 465 facilities respectively.

For a facility, the practical consequence is that audit expectations are fairly standardized: most operators are being audited to the interpretations of one of two firms, and what those auditors ask to see — serial-level custody records, sanitization evidence, downstream due-diligence files — is well established.

Momentum

## A standard in its growth phase.

Initial-certification dates in the US directory, by year.

345

US facilities certified before 2020 — the long-tenured core (44%)

106

new US facilities in 2024 alone — the biggest year in the directory

114

US certificates reach their expiration date within the next 12 months

The growth curve matters for anyone selling into, buying from, or auditing this industry: nearly a third of the US certified base is new to R2v3 since 2024. New certificate holders are building their evidence processes now — and every facility, new or tenured, faces annual surveillance audits and a full recertification every three years.

Method & notes

## Methodology

Source: the public SERI R2 directory (https://sustainableelectronics.org/r2/r2-directory/), exported August 2026. We counted facilities (a company can hold several per-facility certificates), kept only records marked Active, and tabulated country, state, process appendices, certification body, and initial-certification / expiration dates as published. "US companies" deduplicates by listed company name. Percentages are of the 789 US facilities unless stated otherwise.

Figures describe the directory at the snapshot date; SERI updates it continuously. R2v3 is a standard of SERI (Sustainable Electronics Recycling International); ItemStage is not affiliated with or endorsed by SERI. Corrections: contact us (https://itemstage.com/contact).

Changelog: v1.0, published August 2026, from the August 2026 directory snapshot.

Related: R2v3 certification guide — requirements, process, and timeline (https://itemstage.com/itad/r2v3-certification-guide) · what a certificate of data destruction must contain (https://itemstage.com/itad/data-destruction-certificate).

## We built this dataset because we work with these facilities.

ItemStage is a serialized, stage-gated chain-of-custody platform used on high-volume processing floors. For R2v3 facilities, that means custody evidence assembled as the work happens — not the week before an audit. See how it fits an ITAD operation (https://itemstage.com/itad).

ItemStage for ITAD: https://itemstage.com/itad
Talk to Us: https://itemstage.com/contact

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