The Compare ITAD Verification Standard
What “verified” means here.
The checkmark means we checked. What we could confirm is in the report — including when it is less than the vendor claims.
Version 1.0 · Effective August 2026
Three states
Not every vendor here is verified.
A vendor is in exactly one of these states, and the profile always says which.
Listed
Free · automaticCompiled from public sources. Credentials are shown as grey “self-reported” pills. No vendor participation, and no opt-out — a vendor cannot remove themselves from the directory to avoid scrutiny.
Registry-Verified
Free · automatic · permanentEach credential cross-checked against the issuing authority’s public registry: SERI’s R2 Certified Facility Registry, BAN’s e-Stewards Certified Recycler Directory, i-SIGMA’s NAID AAA Member Directory, and the named accrediting body for ISO. A green checkmark per credential, with a source link and the date checked.
This is what powers the directory today, it requires nothing from the vendor, and it stays free permanently.
Compare ITAD Verified
Paid · opt-inThe shield. Available only to vendors already in the directory — if we could not find a vendor in any licensing or certification record, they cannot apply.
Apply for verificationThe paid review
Every eligible vendor who applies gets verified.
What varies is what the report says.
Base verification confirms what is verifiable for any legitimate operator: the entity exists, holds a current licence to operate as an ITAD vendor in the states claimed, and is recognised as valid there. Specializations are earned on evidence and are not granted without it.
The review covers what public registries cannot show:
- —Licence and registration status confirmed against the issuing state authority
- —Certificate documents obtained directly and checked against issuer records
- —Scope verification — which facility, which processes, which data-destruction methods the certification actually covers, rather than a company-level yes/no
- —Regulatory and enforcement history: state environmental agencies, EPA actions, court records, consent decrees
- —Business standing: entity status, ownership, years operating
- —Insurance certificates against the coverage minimums in the vendor agreement
- —Facility confirmation: each processing location, owned versus subcontracted
- —Certification expiry monitoring for the full term, with renewal follow-up
The three tiers
What each badge asserts.
| Tier | What it asserts |
|---|---|
| Verified — Base | The vendor exists, is licensed to operate as an ITAD vendor in the states claimed, and is recognised as valid there. They can lawfully dispose of equipment. |
| Verified — Regulated Industries (RI) | Additionally holds the documented certifications and controls required for regulated-industry work — healthcare, financial services, government. |
| Verified — Critical Infrastructure (CI) | Additionally holds the documented certifications and controls required for critical-infrastructure environments. |
A vendor who applies claiming RI or CI and cannot produce the evidence receives Base. That is not a failure of the process; it is the process working, and the report says exactly what could and could not be confirmed.
A hard rule
The badge always renders its tier.
Never a bare “✓ Verified.” If every paying vendor carries a checkmark, the checkmark alone carries almost no information — the information lives in the tier. A buyer scanning results who sees the same mark on a Base vendor and a CI vendor is misled by omission even though the underlying report is honest.
Rendered this way everywhere the badge appears: profile pages, directory results, comparison tables, bid surfaces, marketplace listings, and any embed.
The fee
You pay for the check, not the answer.
The founding cohort is verified at no cost.
Compare ITAD Verification is a paid service, and pricing will be published here when the paid tier opens. It has not opened yet. The initial cohort is reviewed at no charge, in exchange for being named as founding verified vendors and for permission to publish the process — the review itself, the evidence we asked for, and what we found. Paying nothing does not buy a result: the standard applied to the founding cohort is the standard on this page, and their reports are published like any other.
When the paid tier opens, a single annual fee will cover the review, the report, and monitoring for the term. Because every eligible vendor receives a result, there is no refund question — the vendor pays for a check and receives a check, and the report says what it says.
Two edge cases where a fee is retained without a badge being issued. Both will be stated in the application flow before payment:
- —The vendor is not in the directory. They cannot apply, and no fee is taken.
- —A claimed licence turns out to be invalid, lapsed, or nonexistent, or the vendor misrepresented a material fact. The review was performed, so the fee is retained, and no badge issues until the underlying problem is fixed.
We do not use a refund-on-rejection model. If we only kept money from approvals, we would be financially motivated to approve. Charging for the work regardless of the answer removes that incentive entirely.
What makes that real
Three commitments, not slogans.
We will publish the distribution of verification tiers once the first cohort is complete. Of verified vendors, how many hold Base only, how many RI, how many CI. This is the honest analogue of a pass rate and it is more useful to a buyer — if nearly everyone is Base, that is a finding about the industry, and it is exactly the finding that makes this directory worth reading.
No specialization without evidence. A vendor cannot pay to be RI or CI. They can remediate — obtain the certification, resolve the enforcement action — and be re-reviewed.
The report is available to the buyer, not just to the vendor. A badge whose underlying reasoning is private is a sticker.
Lifecycle
What happens when something lapses.
Re-verification. The shield is reviewed annually. When a certification lapses, the vendor enters a 60-day renewal-pending window. If it is not resolved in that window, the shield is paused and deal routing is suspended. The profile stays published — removing it would hide the finding from exactly the buyer who needs it.
Misrepresentation. A vendor who misrepresents a material fact permanently loses the shield, and we publish a correction.
Version 1.0 — change log
This standard is versioned. Material changes increment the version number; editorial corrections do not.
- 1.0 · August 2026
- First published. Establishes the three vendor states, the three verification tiers, the tier-rendering rule for badges, and the fee model.