Commodity Resource Environmental Receives NAID Certification

Commodity Resource Environmental Inc. (CRE), Burbank, Calif., has been certified by the National Association for Information Destruction (NAID), Phoenix, for the destruction of paper/printed media, micro media and computer hard drives.  

CRE, a silver refining company, uses UNTHA’s shredding technology for the destruction of clients’ hard drives. UNTHA America, based in Hampton, N.H., is a division of the Austrian-based UNTHA Shredding Technology GmbH, which manufactures size reduction equipment for the recycling industry.

The NAID Certification Program is offered on a voluntary basis to NAID members and establishes standards for a secure destruction process, including operational security, employee hiring and screening, the destruction process itself, responsible disposal and insurance. If a company operates in more than one location, all locations must meet NAID criteria to receive the designation.

CRE was founded in 1980 as a full-service silver recovery/refining company. The company’s primary customers include records management and records destruction companies, but CRE also contracts with many hospitals and medical groups because it extracts silver from X-ray films. CRE says it refines more than 24 million pounds of scrap X-rays and associated radiology documents for silver recovery and destruction per year.

“It is a long process to achieve the NAID designation,” says Larry DeWitt, president of CRE. “You have to demonstrate very tight security on multiple fronts—from name badges and visitor logs to the transfer of materials from one location to another. You must demonstrate that the chain of custody of the material is closely monitored at every turn. We had achieved NAID certification for our paper destruction, and are very proud of that. Achieving it again for micro-media is even more rewarding. In addition, we earned the certification on our first audit, which few companies do.”

CRE initially focused on destroying X-ray files, but since X-rays come in paper jackets and with associated medical paperwork, the logical next step was to offer destruction of the paper data as well. The company’s success in that area led to its expansion into micro-media destruction.

CRE uses UNTHA’s RS30 with its four-shaft shredding system. The RS30 first corsely shreds material, then fine shreds it, in one operation, UNTHA notes.

“More than 40 years of expertise is built into the RS series,” says Bernhard Mueggler, president and CEO of UNTHA America. “We have more than 8,000 of these shredders in operation around the globe. We are pleased that one of our machines helped CRE in achieving such an important designation. We pride ourselves on making sure that our clients receive  equipment that is perfectly suited to their needs.”

“We are very pleased with UNTHA’s technology,” says DeWitt. “They are a good company to work with. CRE has evolved a great deal in the last 10 years, and this new technology has helped us continue to change and grow.”