According to the National Association for Information Destruction (NAID), document destruction is a $1.2 billion industry in the United States. And it’s growing at a whopping 35% per year! (And these are not the newest stats, so it’s really big!)
Companies everywhere are generating more sensitive information on paper than ever before. Legally, they are required to safeguard and destroy sensitive information. Health care providers, financial services, technological industries, insurance companies and legal services have been the hardest hit by these new regulations.
Identity theft affects over 9 million Americans every year. Shredding your papers is imperative for your own security.
3 WAYS TO SHRED
Adapted from SSI Shredding Systems, Inc.
From your everyday piles of old papers, to industrial non-paper jobs, SSI says that tearing material to reduce it to smaller particles depends on three actions.
1. Shearing
This action involves the actual cutting of material. As in scissors, shearing efficiency depends on the sharpness of the cutting edges working against each other and the tolerance of the space between them. SSI has developed technology (such as ACLS and hardened alloys) to maintain this tolerance and sharpness, ensuring a clean cut even after long operation.
2. Tearing
Tearing involves pulling the material with such force that it comes apart. Some materials like fabric, soft metals, plastics, and tires, are more tearable than others. Purpose-built tearing reducers (such as SSI’s Primary Waste Reducers) are good for reducing mixed waste where small, uniform particle size is not important.
3. Fracturing
Some materials are brittle, such as glass, hard plastics, and certain metals, and tend to be broken or shattered in a shredder when the cutters aren’t sharp or are loose. Unlike tearing, when something breaks it releases energy explosively, sometimes propelling the shards upwards into the faces of the fascinated onlookers. Always wear eye protection. This includes DVDs, CDs, credit cards, floppies, disks, etc.
4. Optimum Action
All three actions, shearing, tearing, and breaking are present when a shredder is being used. However, when the cutters are kept sharp and the tolerances tight, the dominant and most efficient reduction action should be shearing.
Can you literally just tear paper up with your fingers or cut with scizzors? Sure! When you have just a paper or two, no problem. We’re talking here about inches and reems of paper to destroy.
KINDS OF SHREDDERS
SSI Shredding Systems, Inc. has great photos of the “teeth” that can chew up objects for different needs. Click here to see. Cross-cut is the best for home shredders as opposed to only line cutting, like in the photo above. Why? Line cuts can be puzzled back together to easily.
If the up front cost of a shredder seem too high, you can also rent shredding machines. Check online for shredder rentals in your area. This is great for you and/or companies that ‘clean house’ once a year and don’t need a year round industrial shredder or for companies that can’t afford the cost of a shredder right now.
HOME AND HOME OFFICE SHREDDING
For small and ongoing jobs, there are home shredders. You can purchase a shredder for your daily and sporatic jobs in nearly any price range. They can be found at most any store now, not just office supply, or order online of course.
Here’s just one example of an affordable shredder. The cheaper a shredder is, the more you have to be aware of not overusing at one time as they can overheat and burn out.
They can go up in price and features as you want to afford including heavy duty personal shredders reducing documents to 5/32″ x 1-1/2″ extra security confetti particles, shredding more paper at once, credit cards, CDs and for longer periods without burning out.
DOCUMENT SHREDDER SERVICES – FOR BULK JOBS
Over the past five years the options, places and services to shred a box or more of important documents in a blink have increased. Some services are free too! That’s always good.
1. Start with your local recycle center and ask when their next “free” shred day is. Here is an example of Longmont’s recycle site and Shred Events (yea Longmont!)
2. Next, contact your local banks, hospitals and Chamber of Commerce and ask if they offer shredding by the box. Some banks have a shredder machine right in their lobby to use anytime for small jobs.
3. If no luck on 1 and 2, contact a company that shreds documents as a business. Check your local phone directory yellow pages, go online to your city/county website, or check out some of these national and international companies that do only this, shred your documents by bulk. Shred Nations and The Better Shredder/Denver, CO to name a few.
4. Do an online Search under “paper shredding services ‘your city’”. Here is an example of Boulder area options under Search, “where to shred documents in boulder, co”.
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