With the Consumer Electronics Association’s ongoing effort to help reduce electronic waste nearing its long-term goals, the group recently honored members who have helped boost recycling nationwide.

The Consumer Electronics Association’s efforts to help the electronics industry cut back on e-waste are showing results. As its campaign nears its aspirational recycling goal,  CEA recently took time to highlight the industry’s success stories. More details:

About the program: CEA’s e-Cycling Leadership Initiative, started in 2011, has some lofty goals. The association hopes to encourage consumers to recycle 1 billion pounds of electronics—which would be enough to fill a football stadium top to bottom—each year by 2016. CEA is promoting awareness of recycling options, including more than 8,000 drop-off sites nationwide.

Success stories: On October 22, the association honored Hewlett-Packard, Best Buy, Dell, and Samsung with its inaugural e-Cycling Leadership Award, which recognizes companies that are “recycling above and beyond any level mandated by government,” according to CEA’s news release. The companies, some working with retail partners (such as FedEx Office and Staples in HP’s case, and Goodwill in Dell’s), played a huge part in the program’s recovery of 585 million pounds of electronic waste in 2012 alone. Samsung took things a step further by becoming an e-Stewards Enterprise company, meaning that it will work only with companies that meet certain social and environmental standards. Gary Shapiro, CEA president and CEO, said in the release: “Each of these companies offers national-scale responsible recycling opportunities to consumers and exemplifies our industry’s commitment to environmental stewardship.” The award itself, shown above, was created from glass used in old CRT monitors.

Ongoing efforts: CEA’s recycling push includes the September release of its 2013 Sustainability Report, which featured a number of case studies on industry efforts to deal with electronic waste. On the consumer front, the association’s GreenerGadgets.org helps consumers use and dispose of their electronic products sustainably. “We want to make recycling electronics as easy as buying electronics,” Shapiro said in the release.

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