At the 2004 Electronics Goes Green conference in Berlin, a number of stakeholders from international organisations, academia, industry, business, governments, and civil society agreed on these principles, laying the ground for the Solving the E-waste Problem (StEP) Initiative.

The StEP Initiative was formally launched in 2007 at the UN Secretariat in New York and functions as part of UNU till 2018. Via the ZEF European Focal Point, the ISP Operating Unit, and, ultimately, SCYCLE, UNU exclusively steered the global, public-private StEP Initiative with co-founder Ruediger Kuehr as its Executive Secretary until 2018. At its peak, StEP had upwards of 100 members from every continent. Major high-tech manufacturers – including Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, Dell, Ericsson, Philips, and Cisco Systems – partnered with the UN and with governmental, NGO, and academic institutions, as well as with recycling/refurbishing companies.

Basic goals of StEP included: standardising recycling processes globally to harvest valuable components in electrical and electronic scrap (e-scrap), extending the life of products and markets for reuse, and harmonising world legislative and policy approaches to e-scrap.