New Jersey senate approves SB 2978

Monday, June 27, 2015, the New Jersey State Senate voted unanimously to approve SB 2978, which removes the environmental licensing requirement for operations shredding electronic storage devices, such as hard drives.

Only two weeks ago, the New Jersey Senate Environmental Committee approved the bill, paving the way for it to proceed to the state senate for a vote.

Leaders of the National Association for Information Destruction (NAID), Phoenix, said they saw the restriction as an ongoing obstacle to mobile service providers in the region.

Regarding the passage of the bill, NAID CEO Bob Johnson says the degree and momentum of bipartisan support for the amendment is a good sign.

“New Jersey is the only state in the union that requires such licensing to shred hard drives,” Johnson says. “Regulators there have been quick to recognize that barriers to competition as well as unnecessary red tape impede economic development and data protection.”

Before becoming law, however, a similar bill must pass in the New Jersey Assembly. Johnson says that while there is no definite timeline in which to do so, all signs favor a similar outcome in the not too distant future. NAID says it will continue its advocacy for the amendment throughout that process.

NAID is a nonprofit trade association for the secure destruction industry, currently representing more than 1,900 member locations globally. Its mission is to promote the proper destruction of discarded information and to encourage the outsourcing of destruction needs to qualified contractors.