Historical Archives

Call Us Today!
(706) 724-7982 or
Request a Quote:

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

The Basics of Paper Shredding

No matter the size of your business or the services or products it offers, destroying confidential documents is a must. If you’re thinking, “We have a shredding machine for that,” you should know that there’s a right way and wrong way to shred them. In this blog post, we discuss the basics of paper shredding:

Outsourced vs. In-House Paper Shredding

In-house paper shredding is time-consuming and expensive. Your employees are responsible for removing staples and paperclips from documents. Only a few sheets of paper can be shredded at a time, otherwise the shredder may jam. Then the shredding receptacle must be emptied. It’s not fast or easy. Precious minutes tick away, resulting in lost productivity.

Outsourcing the job saves your company time and money. Secure, barcoded collection containers are brought to your office free of charge. Your employees deposit unwanted paperwork into the containers without having to remove staples, paper clips or sticky notes. When the containers are full, a uniformed and background-screened service representative scans each barcode and records the container’s fill level. Then your documents are shredded on-site with a mobile shredding vehicle or transported to off-site to a shredding plant for destruction. This gives your employees time to focus on what they do best.

Paper Shredding Ensures Compliance

HIPAA, FACTA, SOX, GLB and GA Senate Bill 425 all contain provisions requiring businesses to verify their information destruction processes. Using an office shredder to destroy confidential documents doesn’t offer a verifiable record of regulatory compliance.

A professional paper shredding service offers a Certificate of Destruction after your documents have been destroyed. This document verifies the date, time, and method of destruction, and serves as proof your information has been destroyed.

Both Off-Site and On-Site Shredding Prevent Identity Theft

An outsourced paper shredding service safeguards your clients and employees from identity theft. Your documents are destroyed on-site with a mobile shredding truck or off-site at a shredding plant. Both ways prevent unauthorized access to confidential information through:

  • Strict chain of custody procedures
  • Industrial-grade document destruction
  • Screened, professionally trained shredding technicians

This is the truly secure way to destroy your sensitive documents and records.

Paper Shredding and Paper Recycling Go Hand in Hand

If you care about our planet, you want your shredded paper to be recycled. Fortunately, with a shredding and destruction service, after your documents are shredded into small, unusable pieces, they’re baled and transported to a paper recycling plant. There, your shredded paper is pulped and used to produce a wide range of paper products.

Understanding the basics of paper shredding and using this knowledge to the fullest will help you build a solid and efficient privacy protection plan for your business!

Records Management Center provides professional shredding and destruction solutions for businesses throughout Augusta, Evans, Thomson, and Martinez, GA, and Aiken, SC and the Central Savannah River Area. For more information, please contact us by phone or complete the form on this page.