What Happens To Shredded Paper?

When it’s time to get rid of paper waste, is it better to recycle or to shred?  With document destruction, it’s not a question of choosing – you can do both!

While paper is a necessity across nearly every industry, it has become quite the enemy because of its overabundance.  Paper is just a given; healthcare and legal firms, to name a few, require paper documentation for a myriad of reasons, but that doesn’t mean it needs to be kept indefinitely.  When it’s time to get rid of paper waste, is it better to recycle or to shred? With document destruction, it’s not a question of choosing, as these options are not mutually exclusive.  Relying on a contracted shredding company means you can both shred and recycle, which not only helps to increase office space, but it helps the environment as well.

Consider these facts: the average American creates about 4.43 pounds of trash per day, and some 30 percent of that is paper. Those numbers are rather significant. If you’re going for a smaller carbon footprint, then eliminating how much paper you throw in the trash is one small step toward doing so.

So what happens to your shredded paper once it leaves your facility? It’s recycled, and recycling is an important part of protecting our environment.

What can your old documents make instead of collecting in a landfill? Unwanted mail, shoe boxes, cereal boxes, and pasta boxes can be recycled into paper backing on roofing shingles or new paperboard.

In addition to being environmentally friendly, shredding is also secure.

If your organization is using an office shredder instead of a certified shredding service, chances are that at least one of your employees is dumping shredded paper in the trash instead of the recycling bin.  That means your organization is not recycling all the paper they should, and they’re also exposing confidential information to dumpster divers who can sift through your trash, and then piece together strips of company information for their own personal gain.

Legal Shred securely transports your shredded documents to the recycling plant where it is pulped and recycled into tissue paper.  When we work with businesses looking to shred their office paper, this can be recycled into many products, including toilet paper and paper towels.

With the ever-increasing threat of identity theft, shredding documents with sensitive and confidential personal or business information is a sensible and prudent step for every organization to take.  Turning it into another usable product is one of many additional benefits to document destruction.

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What Happens to Shredded Paper

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