New Jersey scraps licensing requirement for electronic shredding operations

HAMILTON (Scrap Monster): The New Jersey Senate in a unanimous vote has approved the Senate Bill SB 2978 that proposes to scrap additional environmental licensing requirement for shredding electronic storage devices such as hard drives. Earlier in June this year, The NJ Senate Environmental Committee had approved the bill, thereby making way to the State Senate.

The Phoenix-based National Association for Information Destruction (NAID) welcomed the passage of the bill. Bob Johnson, CEO, NAID stated that the overwhelming bipartisan support to the bill must be considered as a good sign. According to NAID, New Jersey was the only state in the US that required environmental licensing for carrying out shredding operations on hard drives. The restriction had been a roadblock to mobile service providers operating in the region, NAID noted. Furthermore, it had prevented market players from fair competition, thereby hindering economic growth of the region.

A similar bill needs to be passed by the New Jersey Assembly in order for the bill to become a law. NAID expressed the hope that NJ Assembly would pass the bill at the earliest. Meantime, the Association would continue its efforts to get the bill signed into a law. An amendment to the bill requires mobile shredders to be certified by NAID and requires all shredded materials to be sent to DEP-approved recycling units.

SB2978 allows mobile hard disk drive shredders to operate without a state permit from the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (DEP).

NAID is a non-profit trade association of the secure destruction industry, currently representing over 1,900 member locations globally. NAID’s mission is to promote the proper destruction of discarded information and to encourage the outsourcing of destruction needs to qualified contractors.