Shredding Services

If you have responsibility at work for secure document disposal, shredding services can make your job a lot easier.

While a little trashbasket-sized paper shredder can do the job for a mom-and-pop home-based business or for anyone wanting to shred home documents such as bank statements, as soon as your business has a larger number of documents with confidential customer information on them, it becomes all the more crucial to be sure that you obey the pertinent laws. There can be national, state, and local laws, depending on where the business you own or work for is located.

If you stop off at a big box store or office supply store and purchase  a paper shredder, or if you buy one online, then you--or someone in your organization--must keep track of those laws. On the other hand, if a paper shredding service is hired, it is part of their task to keep track of all that for you. No doubt they do it anyway, for all their customers.

Another benefit of using such a service instead of going the do-it-yourself route with your own shredder is that while the simple office shredders will make a collection of mighty tiny shreds of paper, at least some of the scraps created by these shredders could be put back together by a truly determined spy of some sort. Not so with the equipment used by the shredding professionals! (Maybe you think nobody would be interested in spying on your business. You could be right, but there are circumstances where you could be too naive.) Many such companies can also shred hard drives, and few of us want our hard drives in anyone's else's hands!

Once you get set up with them, shredding services will be quite routine to use. They may come to your place of business and do the shredding right there or more likely with a mobile shredding truck that they park outside your building or buildings. Alternatively, they may take the documents to be destroyed away with them. In this case, you are likely to receive a certificate stating that the destruction took place.

You can set up an appropriate schedule, depending on how much shredding your business needs. If there are a number of employees at your firm who might have access to the papers waiting to be shredded, you will want to do it more often if it isn't convenient to designate a locked closet area or room as the collection point.

That brings up the question of the security of employees, both yours and those working for the paper shredding company. Typically, those who work for such companies are bonded or otherwise some action is taken to be sure of their reliability--screening at hiring may be far more rigorous, for example, than it would  be for most jobs.

Finding and Selecting Shredding Services

How do you go about finding a good shredding service? This will depend partly on where you are located. In smaller towns and rural areas, there will be fewer choices, where in cities of any size it is simply a matter of going to Google (or your favorite search engine) and typing in something like "paper shredding services New York City." This should give you a good selection of places to examine. Even in smaller places, this is a good way to start. Many of the large shredding services have numerous locations around the country.

How do you select from among the choices? Perhaps you know people in other businesses who could tell you what their experiences have been. You can make a checklist of what you need to know, and then make some phone calls. Here are some things to put on your list:

• Name of the business:
• Phone:
• Contact person:
• Minimum charge:
• Minimum time period if there is one:
• Frequency of service they recommend when you describe your situation:
• Cost estimate for that level of service:
• Would it be onsite or offsite?
• Do they also shred hard drives?

With a list like that, you can easily evaluate a number of shredding services and choose one that best suits your needs.