Mobile Shredding Association responds to Stericycle’s plan to discontinue on-site shredding

Stericycle acquired Shred-it in late 2015. Since then, the company has had the goal of converting its customers to off-site shredding. However, in an April 28, 2016, conference call to discuss the Stericycle earnings report for the first quarter of 2016, Brent Arnold, executive vice president and chief operating officer of the Lake Forest, Illinois-based company, said the company has reassessed the timeline for this conversion.

He said: “Our Shred-it integration efforts remain a priority across the organization. We are confident in our ability to achieve the full $73 million in Shred-it synergies, and our team has either completed or made solid progress on many of the integration projects.

“However, we have reassessed the original timeline associated with the reroute in on-site to off-site conversions. While several regions have successfully made this conversion, the time to convert each region is taking longer than previously anticipated.”

Arnold added that nearly $20 million in anticipated reroute and on-site to off-site synergies will be extended into 2017, with a full impact realized in 2018.

The Mobile Shredding Association, Raleigh, North Carolina, has taken issue with the company’s move, saying it “categorically opposes any effort to diminish the value of on-site, witnessed secure document destruction.”

The association adds, “The move to convert clients to off-site shredding increases the complexity in managing document chain of custody, effectively removes client’s option to witness destruction and creates a delay between receiving of client materials and the destruction of those materials, which will certainly not take place immediately and may not take place within an appropriate amount of time.”

MSA adds that it feels the company’s on-site clients “will not be well-served by this change.”

The nonprofit organization says it “advises all clients should be aware of the additional risks of off-site shredding and added benefits of on-site secure destruction services so that they may make informed vendor choices based on their assessment of those risks.”