The safest way to dispose of an old passport is to physically destroy it yourself, targeting the biographical data page, the photograph, and the RFID chip embedded in the back cover. A cancelled or expired passport still shows your full name, date of birth, place of birth, and passport number, so dropping it in the trash or recycling gives an identity thief everything they need. Before you shred anything, confirm you don’t still need the book for identification, an active visa, or as a personal record.
Check Before You Destroy
An old passport isn’t always garbage. Three things are worth checking first.
It May Still Work as ID
An undamaged expired U.S. passport counts as primary identification when you apply for a new one in person. The State Department accepts a “valid or expired, undamaged U.S. passport book or passport card” as a primary ID document.1U.S. Department of State. Get Photo ID for a U.S. Passport One limit worth flagging: an expired passport does not satisfy Form I-9 employment verification, which requires List A documents to be unexpired.2U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. 13.0 Acceptable Documents for Verifying Employment Authorization and Identity
It May Contain an Active Visa
A visa stamped inside an expired passport can remain valid on its own timeline. If you hold a valid U.S. visa in an expired passport, you can travel to the United States by carrying both the old passport with the visa and your new valid passport. Both must be from the same country, the visa has to be undamaged, and the visa type must match your purpose of travel. Never peel the visa out and paste it into the new book; that voids it entirely.3U.S. Department of State. About Visas – The Basics The same principle applies to visas issued by other countries. Flip through every page before you decide to destroy the book.
It May Be Worth Keeping
Entry stamps, exit stamps, and visa stickers make an old passport a personal record that’s hard to reconstruct. A cancelled passport with a hole punch is essentially harmless as a keepsake, because the punch signals to anyone who sees it that the document is invalid.
Why Casual Disposal Is Risky
A passport packs together your full legal name, date of birth, place of birth, passport number, photograph, and signature. Passports are also built to last, with laminated pages and reinforced covers that don’t tear or break down like ordinary paper. A book tossed at the curb can sit intact for a long time.
Passports issued since late 2006 add a second layer. These e-passports contain an RFID chip in the back cover that stores a digital copy of everything on the biographical data page, including the photo.4U.S. Department of Homeland Security. e-Passports The chip is designed to be read only when the book is open, and the cover works as a shield when closed. But a passport lying open in a recycling bin can be scanned at close range by anyone with a reader. Any disposal method needs to physically destroy the chip along with the pages.
Destroying an Old Passport Yourself
A cross-cut or micro-cut shredder is the most reliable tool. Feed the entire book through, cover included. Strip-cut shredders leave pieces large enough to reassemble, so step up to cross-cut if you can. Give special attention to three spots: the biographical data page with your photo and personal details, the machine-readable zone at the bottom of that page, and the back cover where the RFID chip sits. The chip is a thin square, and it needs to be cut through or crushed to stop it from being scanned.
No shredder? Scissors do the job. Cut the biographical data page into small, irregular pieces. Slice through the photograph so a face can’t be lifted from it. Cut through the chip area in the back cover several times, in different directions. Then scatter the fragments across different trash bags or take them out on different collection days. Splitting the debris makes reassembly effectively impossible.
Using a Professional Shredding Service
Commercial document-shredding companies will destroy a passport alongside other sensitive papers. Mobile shredding trucks and drop-off services are widely available. Retail drop-off counters at shipping and office-supply stores rarely issue a certificate of destruction, so if you want documented proof, look for a dedicated shredding company that offers witnessed destruction.
Don’t Destroy a Valid Passport
Federal law makes it a crime to forge, counterfeit, or mutilate a passport with the intent that it be used as a travel document, with penalties reaching up to 10 years in prison for a first offense and more for offenses tied to drug trafficking or terrorism.5Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 U.S. Code 1543 – Forgery or False Use of Passport That statute targets fraud, not someone shredding a cancelled passport. Still, don’t destroy a passport that is still valid and has not been cancelled. If you want to be rid of a valid passport you no longer need, report it on Form DS-64 first so the State Department officially cancels it, then destroy the physical book.
One note on how you probably ended up with the book in the first place: when you renew by mail, the State Department mails your old passport back after cancelling it, usually by punching a hole or clipping a corner.6U.S. Department of State. Renew Your Passport by Mail The hole makes it visibly invalid, but the personal data is still readable, so treat it like any other document you want to destroy.
Passport Cards Follow the Same Rules
U.S. passport cards contain RFID technology, just like e-passport books.7U.S. Department of State. Get a Passport Card To dispose of an expired or cancelled card, cut through the chip and slice the card into small pieces. A cross-cut shredder rated for plastic cards handles this cleanly; otherwise, heavy scissors and several cuts through the chip area will do it.
Canceling a Deceased Relative’s Passport
If you’re handling the affairs of a family member who has died, their passport should be cancelled before it’s destroyed, to prevent misuse. Mail the passport, a certified copy of the death certificate, and a letter requesting cancellation to the State Department’s Consular Lost and Stolen Passport Unit. In the letter, say whether you want the cancelled passport returned or destroyed by the agency.8U.S. Department of State. Report Your Passport Lost or Stolen The address is:
U.S. Department of State
Consular Lost and Stolen Passport Unit (CLASP)
44132 Mercure Circle
P.O. Box 1227
Sterling, VA 20166-1227