All About Shredding Services

Answer 1

The shredding and disposal of confidential documents has become every bit as commonplace in the modern hospital or business as taking out the trash or locking the doors at night. Current legal statues dictate that a certain amount of paperwork must be kept readily available until the statue of limitations runs out, at which time it must be destroyed. As such, even low security companies often find themselves in possession of large quantities of paper that must be ground up and destroyed.

In many cases, simple office shredders can get the job done, especially when dealing with day-to-day document destruction. However, large companies, and companies which are changing leadership, often need to destroy particularly large amounts of documents. For such situations, they hire shredding services. These are companies who own one or more giant paper shredders, capable of converting an entire truckload of phone books into confetti in a matter of minutes. These machines look more like woodchippers than traditional shredders, but are capable of processing thousands of pages per minute. They are very dangerous and need to be operated by trained hands with the appropriate safety gear.

The point of shredding is to provide physical “proof” that the documents were destroyed, as well as to produce a waste product which can safely be recycled. While certain kinds of sensitive documents must be burned, and many shredding services also offer burning as an extra option, in general shredding is cheaper, especially since the shredded documents can be turned into high-quality recycled paper. This is beneficial to the environment as well as the shredding company and its customers, and is rapidly becoming the preferred method of disposing of shredded documentation.

Shredding services are available in most major areas. When selecting one, it is important to verify that they have a reputation for destroying documents completely and that they will verify such destruction. Most shredding services pride themselves on confidentiality, and even provide boxes which can be sealed to ensure documents remain unread and are fed directly into the shredders, box and all. The use of disposable cardboard containers has become very popular among shredding companies who work with hospitals and financial institutions, and is now available to many sorts of customers.