Is Someone Recycling Your Identity?

According to a recent Bureau of Justice Report, 7% of those over the age of 16 were a victim of identity theft in 2012. If you’re not taking the correct precautions when you recycle, you could be tempting fate and potentially joining this number.

Now this doesn’t mean you should stop recycling to protect your identity, because you can run the same risk if you put items in the garbage or leave them around the house. Instead, just take a few extra steps before recycling certain products.

Paper is one of the first things we think of in terms of recycling. Consider all the mail you receive with financial information: bills, tax documents, financial statements and even credit card solicitations. Most likely, you are recycling this alongside your newspaper, magazines, junk mail and cardboard boxes.

The easiest way to prevent identity theft when recycling mail is to shred these documents. From a recycling standpoint, the problem is that shredding significantly reduces the value of the paper fiber, meaning some recyclers won’t accept shredded paper. Here are a few other ways to safely recycle mail with personal information:

• Use a marker to black out your personal information, including names, addresses and numbers before you put it in the recycling bin.

• See if your community hosts a shredding event, where you can bring documents to be destroyed and recycled. In these cases, the recycling partner is able to process the shredded paper.

Office supply stores such as Office Max, Office Depot and Staples also offer on-site shredding at many stores for a per pound charge.

Boyd Leake is a Buckhead native and the founder and owner of Community Environmental. Since 1995 he has been an environmental and sustainability consultant with an emphasis on recycling, composting and “green” solid waste management.