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Texas has a bad reputation for hazardous waste disposal violations; in 2021 alone 998 businesses incurred over $5.6 billion in significant incidents according to the EPA.
How do you avoid adding to those statistics? By getting a certificate of destruction.
In today’s post we here at Trashco Inc. will take you through what you need to know in order to guarantee the responsible disposal of any sensitive items, from hazardous waste to defective goods. We’ll cover:
Let’s dive right in.
Picture this.
You’re the manager of a successful retail store. Business is booming, profits are steady, and you’re excited for the release of a new games console that is set to fly off the shelves. The new stock arrives on time, everything is stacked, your displays are shifted to call attention to the new release, and you open your doors to a queue of eager customers.
But there’s an issue.
It turns out that the initial run of consoles are defective in some way. The fault is so bad that you have to refund everyone who bought them, you can’t sell any of the unopened boxes, and your supplier doesn’t want the units back. However, they will reimburse your store for the stock you’ve already paid for with one key condition; you need to dispose of them.
You can’t just trash those consoles and take a picture - this wouldn’t qualify as sufficient evidence for either your or your supplier’s insurance to pay out. After all, whoever disposes of them could instead decide to keep and sell them at a discounted price.
That’s where a certificate of destruction comes in. It’s an officially signed notice that items have been fully disposed of, leaving no room for units to go missing in the interim, and providing evidence that your store has no responsibility if anything has gone awry.
If you don’t get a certificate of destruction for excess or faulty goods, you’re leaving your business open to legal issues from pretty much every potential angle. If something happens to the goods after they were supposed to be destroyed (eg, reselling) or you dispose of them yourself (eg, shredding documents) and thus have no official proof of the destruction to give to anyone who needs it, there’s no surefire way to defend yourself.
For example, let’s say a batch of premade pizzas is recalled because of a potential contamination risk or an incident of them making a customer ill in another part of the country. You receive the recall notice and pull them off the shelves, but decide the risk is small and so give some of the pizzas to your staff instead of “wasting” them. If your staff get sick as a result, you could be legally at fault for not ensuring that they were disposed of when you were told to.
Whether you’re actively involved in the events following the item’s intended destruction or not doesn’t matter. You didn’t do everything in your power to make sure that everything was disposed of, and so you are at fault, which could lead to fines or worse, depending on the items and the accusations or consequences of failed disposal.
Thankfully, getting a certificate of destruction is pretty simple. All you have to do is make sure that the company disposing of your waste offers them for relevant duties - they aren’t something that you can draw up yourself to say “we definitely dealt with the problem”.
These certificates will contain the following information:
The company that’s disposing of your items should include their address and contact information, as this makes it much easier to reach out to them if there are any issues with the process or further down the line. The invoice and transaction numbers provide an audit trail that shows, without question, what happened, the parties involved, and that the company you paid gave their guarantee that the items would be appropriately disposed of.
As long as you hand off your materials to a qualified company that gives a certificate of destruction in return, the responsibility of effectively disposing of those items is now on their shoulders, not yours. If environmental guidelines or resale practices are breached, you no longer have any culpability.
Put simply, a certificate of destruction is the key to maintaining your brand’s integrity and avoiding any nasty fines that could be incurred by not guaranteeing the disposal of a particular item. Whether it’s hazardous waste, scrap vehicles, or a bad batch of candy, these certificates are your proof that everything has been efficiently and appropriately destroyed, who was responsible for their transport and destruction, and when it all happened.
After all, it’s bad for business if you’re found to be responsible for problems related to failed waste disposal.
The key is finding a waste disposal company that not only provides you with a certificate of destruction when necessary, but that you can also rely on to handle your waste effectively and professionally every time.
That’s where the Trashco Inc. team comes in!
We take pride in our effective waste management and disposal services, and have been trusted by companies across Texas to dispose of sensitive or defective materials without fail. If you need a certificate of destruction for your goods, we’re only a message away.
