Office Shredder Risks

5 Reasons Why You Should Retire Your Office Shredder and Hire a Shredding Service

1. Office Shredders Produce Strips of Paper That Can Be Reassembled

Most office shredders shred use a cross-cut or ribbon cut method to shred documents. When these strips of paper are discarded or recycled, “dumpster divers” can sort through the trash and reassemble these paper strips. This gives them easy access to confidential information you thought was destroyed. You may think that this scenario is unlikely to happen, but the truth is that this form of information fraud is so common, companies actually sell software on the internet that allows these thieves to scan and reassemble confidential documents.

ShredQuick uses advanced pierce and tear technology on all our shredding trucks to produce a confetti-like output that is small and unreadable. Also, our shredding trucks typically carry thousands of shredded documents from numerous clients, all mixed together on the same truck, making our shredded documents impossible to reassemble.

2. Office Shredders Don’t Always Get Used

What makes office shredders an even bigger security risk than their cross-cut shredding method is that businesses don’t always use them. In a perfect world your employees would never leave stacks of confidential documents on their desk because they were too busy to shred them. They would never leave files next to the office shredder because the shredder was in use and they certainly would never dump confidential documents into a recycling bin, because using the office shredder was too much of a hassle. But it’s not a perfect world and your employees are often too busy doing their jobs to take the time to feed the office shredder.

ShredQuick makes it easy for your employees to securely discard their confidential documents, without the hassle of using an office shredder. All they have to do is deposit their every-day confidential documents into one of the locked security bins strategically located in their work area and ShredQuick will pick everything up and shred on site.

View a step-by-step preview of our On-Site Shredding process.

3. Office Shredders Can Leave You Vulnerable In Audits And Lawsuits

When an auditor or lawyer discovers that your organization uses an office shredder they could “charge” you with irregular shredding practices. That’s because in-house shredding programs don’t adhere to a regular shredding schedule and they don’t provide adequate documentation of what’s been shredded, when it’s been shredded or by whom. So when a question arises as to when and why a particular piece of information was shredded, organizations without documentation are susceptible to severe fines.

ShredQuick offers a variety of regularly-scheduled document shredding programs with a paper trail that will satisfy any auditor or lawyer. We shred all your discarded confidential documents on site, at your location and always provide a Certificate of Destruction, so that you have documented evidence of every single shred.

4. Office Shredders Are A Safety Hazard

In the last five years there have been numerous reports of injuries from office shredders, including lacerations and lost fingers. And while these cases are relatively few given the number of office shredders, there is no denying that many of these injuries go unreported and that the sharp blades of an office shredder can injure someone if they’re not careful. Office shredders also produce an inordinate amount of dust from shredded documents that left unchecked, can get into the air ducts and create a fire hazard.

ShredQuick on-site shredding service means you’ll never have to deal with the safety hazards of sharp blades or dust fragments again.

5. Office Shredders Cost Twice As Much As A Shredding Service

A small business with just three employees that uses an office shredder spend will spend, on average, 15 minutes of staff time each and every day shredding confidential documents. When you consider the average hourly wage, plus benefits and factor in depreciation and maintenance costs on the shredder, it can cost that small business $185 per month or more to operate an office shredder. That’s nearly twice as much as our regularly scheduled, on-site shredding pickup service. To calculate the cost to operate your office shredder, click here.

ShredQuick guarantees that you’ll save 50% or more when you switch from your office shredder to our on-going route service…and we’ll even provide the tools to help you measure your results. If after 30 days you feel you’re not saving 50% or more, we’ll remove our security containers and refund your money, no questions asked.