Shredding and Recycling Paper

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There is a misconception about documents that once they have been shredded can then go to the recycling bins. We all want to do better in how we live and the impact we have on the environment but unfortunately when you shred sensitive documents from home or from work it cannot then go into the recycling. Small pieces of paper like that are not something the recycling plant and machinery can handle. When you shred paper it will end up in a landfill unless you find professional paper shredding services who have their own recycling practice.

Why can shredded paper not go to recycling plants?

As mentioned you would expect the paper to go to the recycling just fine, after all, newspapers and such all go through just fine. But it is not the material but the size. Shredded paper pieces are so small they cannot get properly sorted to then go through the recycling process. It is not good for the machinery and being too small to separate it just then heads straight to a landfill.

If then you cannot put your shredded papers into the recycling bin what do you choose to do, shred and then let that end up at the landfill or not shred, leaving valuable information easy to steal and earning a bad reputation for not protecting your customers and clients’ information. Even if you keep your shredded paper and try to take it the right place they will likely turn you away as the amount is too small.

Shredding services are the answer

The answer when it comes to protecting sensitive information and looking after the environment is to use a professional service for paper shredding Gold Coast. This is because they have a process set up already at the end of the shredding to ensure the recycling happens. This is because they bring those papers in such bulk that the facilities that recycle them can process them. A lot of paper shredding services will actually partner with recycling facilities.

You decide first how the documents are going to get to the shredding stage. Some allow you to send in boxes of documents for destruction or bring them in person, some offer mobile services where they come and shred it in front of you, and some will offer pick up services for larger amounts often, which they then bring back to their facility for paper shredding. You should then be given and be sent a certificate to verify the documents have been destroyed. Then they take the shredded documents in large amounts to a recycling provider.

Conclusion

If you are determined to get your documents shredded to protect the data on them and to have that paper recycled, the best option is services that offer paper shredding Gold Coast. If your concern about using such options is not knowing whether the paper has really been destroyed then you can choose the options where you witness the shredding.

Document Shredding During COVID-19

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Document Shredding During COVID-19

These are difficult times we live in right now. People are concerned about their safety, and their families, as well as their employees. All businesses are having to change the way they operate, how certain things like document shredding, happen so that it is safe for the service you are using and for yourself and your employees. The key is finding a shredding service that has put in place their safety actions to protect their clients while still getting the shredding done.

An Evolving situation

As we learn more about COVID-19 it becomes more obvious that you need a service that makes changes and can evolve when the latest safeguards are recommended. Paper shredding is something that businesses and individuals still need to do. While the virus has had a huge impact on how we work and our daily lives, rubbish still needs collecting, people need to buy food, paper still needs shredding! Letting boxes build-up is a security risk to all the people who’s information you have in there. There are still criminals looking to steal such data regardless of the pandemic we are experiencing. You still need to protect your clients, your employees and make sure they destroy the information properly after the shredding happens.

What we have changed to ensure the safety of all our stakeholders.

  • Offer Remote shredding rather than on-site shredding. Many services offer a choice between the two, but with COVID-19 more are likely to just offer remote shredding.
  • Less contact when collecting materials to shred. Rather than you having to sign a manifest, collectors will note down the name of the authorized person that was present.
  • Visiting clients at their homes with residential mobile paper shredding
  • Some might offer a reduced charge based on the more minimal service you are getting.
  • Calling ahead to ensure clients place boxes outside so the 2-meter social distancing can be observed for customers who have a credit card on file.
  • Offering clients more flexibility in scheduling their service.
  • All staff wearing masks when social distancing is not possible or if they have to enter a building.
  • All staff should have training in minimizing interactions, washing hands, contact, and so on.
  • No sick staff.
  • All equipment needs washing regularly and especially after visiting each client.
  • Respecting any client who refuses entry into their building and organizing another pick-up option.
  • Making sure there is clear communication at all times between the document shredding service and the client.
  • Non-essential employees working from home.
  • Professional and respectful attitude to all clients with no inflammatory remarks about protective choices they have made to keep themselves and their business safe.

Conclusion

When looking for service for paper shredding in the past, the key concerns were things like affordability, reliability, professionalism, effective document destruction, having a recycling program, and so on. While these things are of course still important today, also important is their response to COVID-19 and how they are ensuring they keep their clients and their staff safe as the work continues.

Onsite vs. Off Site (mobile) Shredding

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Onsite vs. Off Site 

Document shredding is an integral part of business security. While companies are meticulous about their electronic data security, it is equally important how they handle physical data. Per the 2015 BakerHostetler Incident Response Report, a full 20% of all data breaches involve physical, paper records. There are two types of shredding services to choose from – off-site and on-site shredding.

Onsite Shredding

Onsite shredding, also called mobile shredding, involves calling a shredding company to your place of business. They will bring a vehicle with a shredder inside and destroy all your documents without them ever leaving the premises. There are advantages to onsite shredding, including:

Convenient. Onsite shredding means the company comes to your business to perform shredding.

Secure. You can visually confirm your documents are shredded as the process is occurring and your documents never leave the property intact.

Immediate. There is less room for error as all documents are immediately destroyed as they are received.

Offsite Shredding

With offsite shredding, a shredding company sends a vehicle to your business to pick up your documents, empties shred bins, or picks up any boxes of documents you have to be destroyed. They then haul your documents to a shredding facility. The advantages of offsite shredding include:

Excellent for regular, scheduled shredding. Offsite shredding is often employed by businesses that have a regular recurring need for shredding services. Companies can have their documents removed for shredding on a weekly or monthly basis, simply tossing documents bound for shredding into designated bins.

Cost-effective. Offsite shredding is a more economical option for document shredding. It also reduces the need for offsite storage of sensitive documents that are no longer needed but represent a legal liability if not properly handled and stored.

Environmentally friendly. It is more environmentally friendly to use offsite shredding, as shredding companies can recycle your destroyed materials.

Wider service area. Shredding companies typically have a broader service area for picking up documents to be shredded as opposed to doing the shredding onsite.

Which Do You Choose to Meet Your Needs?

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics only 27% of identity theft occurred online, reinforcing how important securing, and properly destroying when needed, physical information can be. This is just one more reason to protect all your documents. Putting personal client information at risk can be catastrophic to your business.

Additionally, your information is the lifeblood of your company and a breach can cause a loss in revenue as well as damage your company’s reputation. Your service choice should be based on the sensitivity of your information and your budget constraints.

Some companies deal with documents that require destruction that is witnessed. This can be because materials are copyrighted, royalty-based documents, or private client records. In these instances, on-site shredding may be required. In some instances, even legally so.

When the security needs are not so specific, off-site shredding is a far more affordable option. A reputable company will still guarantee document destruction. Some even allow for the viewing of the destruction of your materials remotely. It also makes for a convenient way to handle documents, as a company can set up secured shredding bins where a shredding company can come in periodically to empty them.

 

What business Documents Should Be Shredded? | Brisbane Shredding

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What Business Documents Should be Shredded?

Almost all businesses will collect, store, and destroy sensitive information. This information will typically have a range of details from clients, customers, employees, and suppliers. And, even though we are firmly in the digital age, many businesses will have a large range of paper documents.

Here is where the risk lies.

When companies don’t hire specialists like Brisbane Document Destruction Services to take care of their document shredding, they are at risk of identity theft, and fraud.

Almost all businesses are aware of how critical it is that they store data correctly, but beyond that, not all are as compliant as they should be.

In order to protect your business from fines, fraud, and ID theft, here is a guide to which business documents should be shredded.

What Business Documents Should be Shredded?

Procurement:

  • Vendor records
  • Vendor specifications
  • Vendor purchase orders
  • Vendor information (confidential)
  • Corporate pricing and records

Operations:

  • Manuals and instructions
  • Training Information and documents
  • Timesheets and activity
  • Contracts
  • Health and safety issues
  • General service information
  • Appraisal and product testing

Leadership:

  • Budgets
  • Reports
  • Legal contracts
  • Drafts of legal documents
  • Correspondence

HR:

  • Payroll
  • Performance assessments
  • Medical records
  • Treatment programs
  • Applications
  • Disciplinary reports
  • Promotions and applicable agreements

R&D

  • New product information
  • Reports
  • Product development
  • Forumals, tests, and product plans
  • Specification drawings and plans

Accounting

  • Budget schedules
  • Internal reports
  • Supplier information
  • Customer lists
  • Payroll statements

Sales & Marketing

  • Contracts and customer lists
  • Advertising plans
  • Activity sheets
  • Training sheets
  • Strategies and pricing

There is a wider range of documents that should be shredded by a professional shredding company. The list above is a guide to help you make informed choices. If you have questions regarding the type of documents that you have within your company then give Brisbane Document Destruction Services a call, we will be happy to help.

Importance of Shredding Business Documents

Government agencies, corporations, large businesses, and any business that holds information have to abide by strict regulations regarding how long they are allowed to store certain types of documents.

It is vital that you understand which documents will come under the rules and which do not. You will need to have a process in place to take care of those documents when they reach the end date of storage. Ideally, you should have a shred and no shred procedure in place. This will help streamline this process for your staff.

To protect your business and all fines that are associated with incorrect data disposal, you can hire Brisbane Document Destruction Services. We offer a fully rounded document destruction package that includes secure lockable bins, prepaid services, and a certification of destruction.

Not only all of that, but we recycle all of the destroyed paper. Making us the green option too. Brisbane Document Destruction Services serve the Gold Coast and surrounding areas, our impeccable services guarantee security and prompt and reliable service.

For all your Document Destruction needs,

call us on 07 3167 6190 or email via sales@brisbaneshredding.com.au.

Our friendly and professional staff are happy to help with your document destruction needs.

Shred in Brisbane? These are the hidden costs

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Do you shred sensitive information in your Brisbane workplace? The average office shredder seems like an inexpensive way to destroy confidential documents but the office shredder can be risky and more costly than you may think.

The impact of becoming victim to identity theft, fraud and other fraudulent crimes is devastating.

Hidden costs and risks of shredding documents in an office shredder:

The shredder: This may have a fixed, relatively low up-front price tag but there are additional maintenance, replacement and cleaning costs to be considered. The shredding of large amounts of paper in-house can also produce a fine dust, affecting employee health.

Human Error: It’s only human nature to make mistakes but a mistake when shredding can be detrimental. Office shredding often leaves the decisions on what to shred up to the employees. Negligence on an employees behalf can cause significant threat to information safety.

Compliance: When shredding is done in the office, the employees responsible for the process, often do not have suitable training in document security, retention and disposal. There is also no proof of secure document destruction when shredding in-office.

Labour: How could you forget about time and productivity costs of employees when they must spend their valuable time shredding documents. Office shredders can’t handle paper clips and staples (so these will need to be removed by the employees) and documents need to be arranged into easy to shred portions then manually fed into the paper shredder. The employees will also need to empty receptacles and clean up…on the clock.

Effectiveness: Paper is often cut into long strips by office-grade shredders. These can easily be pieced back together and increase the risk of a security breach.

Some of the benefits to using a reliable document shredding service:

* Sensitive documents are removed from the workplace for shredding with industrial grade equipment so employees are not affected by fine dust.
* A shred-it-all policy reduces the risk of human error and all documents provided to a reliable document shredding service like ours, are disposed under strict guidelines.
* Staff at our reliable document shredding centres have been cleared to a minimum required by the National Police Records Check
* Compliance requirements are met by using a reliable document shredding service as a Certificate of Destruction is provided after every shred for audit purposes.
* Whole files can be shredded by a reliable document shredding service so no need to remove paper clips and staples
* Documents are cross-shredded and destroyed into fragments that cannot be reassembled before they are transferred to a paper recycling facility where they will be recycled into
paper products

Ready to protect your Brisbane business?

Brisbane Document Destruction Service is 100% Australian owned and operated.

To learn more about how we can protect your documents and security, please call us on (07) 3167 6190 or email sales@brisbaneshredding.com.au

Does your Brisbane office destroy documents in an environmentally friendly way?

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What better feeling than safe-guarding your sensitive information and doing your bit for the environment?

Brisbane Document Destruction Service’s process is environmentally friendly and approximately all of the material shred in our secure location is recycled on a daily basis.

Recycled paper is paper that has been reconstituted into paper again. We have produced millions of tonnes of shreds that are fed into paper recycling. Documents are cross-shredded and reduced into tiny fragments before being transferred to a paper recycling facility where they will be recycled into new paper products.

Each tonne of recycled paper can save 17 trees, 380 gallons of oil, three cubic meters of landfill space, 4000 kilowatts of energy and 7000 gallons of water.

In order for our process to work, businesses need to do their bit to ensure the paper they no longer need gets to us and their sensitive documents and information are securely destroyed to avoid consequences like identity theft and corporate espionage.

Research has found the location of your shredding bin has an influence on the rate of use. If your shredding bin is in an inconvenient location, it’s importance to employees will be less. It’s also a handy tip to locate your shredding bin next to or close by to a general waste bin or other recycling bin so that employees are inclined to make use of it as it is convenient to them.

Employers and businesses can also do their bit by ensuring staff and associated personnel are educated on the shredding policies in place and are also motivated to take part in the initiatives.

A ‘Shredding Hero’ award could be given out or perhaps feedback and acknowledgement at staff meetings on how the shredding collection process is going are both examples of good ways to motivate the workplace to participate.

Choosing us to shred your sensitive documents and information so that we can benefit the environment does not only make economic sense but it makes environmental sense. Think of all the time employees could save from leaving tedious, time-consuming administrative work like shredding to the professionals.,

It’s simple to get a suitable shredding collection service from Brisbane Document Destruction Services to free your office from document clutter, boost it’s recycling capabilities and avoid a privacy breach or identity theft.

Phone us on (07) 3167 6190 to find out how we can remove the hassle and provide your workplace with the shredding tools it needs to get it’s shredding process up to scratch.

Sources:

https://businessrecycling.com.au/research/barriers.cfm

Why use a secure document destruction service?

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How businesses collect, handle, store and ultimately destroy sensitive information, whether their own or that of clients and customers, is one of today’s hot-button issues. With identity theft on the rise, the public is increasingly insistent that businesses securely handle personal data. Any business that fails in this regard not only runs the risk of reputational damage but can find itself in hot water with regulators and the law.

Then there is the problem of industrial espionage. Carelessly handled business documents can be a treasure trove for unscrupulous enterprises seeking an advantage over competitors.

Total and completely secure destruction of sensitive documents is essential in ensuring that information does not end up in the wrong hands. And when it comes to secure document destruction, Brisbane Document Destruction Service has the experience and know-how you can rely on. From the moment you contact us to when your documents are completely destroyed, your security is our number one concern.

  • We provide lockable bins, allowing your documents to be stored securely on your premises.
  • We deliver to and pick up direct from your site, ensuring convenience and security.
  • All staff including our drivers are cleared with a minimum National Police Records Check.
  • Our pickup vans are tracked at all stages of their journey.
  • Documents are not simply shredded. They go through a comprehensive cross-shredding process, reducing them to tiny fragments.
  • Our destruction site is closely monitored with CCTV.
  • After the destruction, all paper collected is recycled into new paper products.

At the end of the process, the customer receives a Certificate of Destruction, legal proof that all data has been completely and permanently destroyed.

Implementing regular document destruction using Brisbane Document Destruction Service protects the security of both your business and your customers. Call us today on (07) 3167 6190 to find out how secure, easy and cost-effective our services are.