NAID Briefing--Why Some Recyclers Struggle with Document Destruction

As far back at the 1950s, scrap paper companies and, to a lesser extent, records storage firms provided document destruction services to business and industry. Granted, it was usually at the client’s urging, and the security involved in the process was admittedly spotty and suspect. But, the fact remains, those are the roots of the industry.

Then, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, some scrap paper recyclers and records storage companies saw enough demand to focus on it. Those that profited best in that environment were those that created separate identities for these spin-offs. And, in this fact lay the first hint of what was to follow between 1988 and 2000, namely that dedicated destruction services would rise up to claim the bulk of the opportunity in the exploding document destruction industry.

How did the industry that spawned the data destruction business miss the parade? It happened for a reason that every businessperson understands . . . focus.

If your business is scrap paper, you focus on tonnage and paper quality. You never give a thought to all those small and medium-sized offices with very little volume and low-quality paper.

On the other hand, if the focus is on providing an essential security service, then those offices represent an untapped market that will generate millions of dollars in revenue.

If your business is scrap paper, you could wonder, and maybe even chuckle a little bit, at the proposition that businesses will pay you to process the same paper for which you would otherwise pay them.

Then again, if your focus is information destruction, you understand that your acceptance of the fiduciary responsibility inherent to appropriately destroying valuable and sensitive information is a liability for which you had better be getting paid. And, in doing so, you are providing a service that has a critical and legally defined difference from recycling; a difference that has value to the client.

And most importantly, if your focus is information destruction, you know enough about legal differences between information destruction services and recycling that you have no trouble communicating that value to the client.

Luckily for some recycling companies, they knew enough to come at the service from that perspective and have not missed out on the explosion in demand.

And luckily for those that didn’t get it right the first time, there is still enough of an opportunity left to get it right from here forward.