The Trick to Recycling Shredded Paper

How To Recycle Shredded Paper

As concerns over the environment have increased over the past few years, businesses and residential communities have started more “going green” recycling campaigns to do their part. Just separate the paper from the plastics from the metals and throw them in a bin on the curb.  We often think recycling paper is the easiest way to save the planet, since it has a 60% recycling rate. However, where regular paper is fairly simple, shredded paper is complex. That’s right, if you take that sheet of looseleaf and tear it into bits, it suddenly becomes a hassle and even non-recyclable in many places. Many recycling services refuse to accept shredded paper, since it’s highly ineffective at being turned into new paper. It can also clog up recycling machinery at sorting plants. Evidently, the only real way to separate shredded paper from everything else is by hand -- arduous, tedious, and in the end, costly.

So this begs the question: how do you actually go about recycling your shredded paper? You presumably don’t want your identity stolen by a dumpster diver and your credit card statements are nobody’s business but your own. Well, the answer is fairly simple, but not completely obvious:

1. Separate the shredded paper into a bag. Many communities will take shredded paper as long as it’s in its own receptacle. Just be sure it’s not a plastic bag -- it’ll end up in a landfill, which defeats the purpose of your green efforts.
2. Check for local shredded paper pickup services. Some places have trucks that will get your shredded nuisance bits, though they may only do it by request.
3. Communities often host periodic free “shredding days” where the community can bring their scraps to machines specifically designed to handle shredded paper.
4. Reduce your amount of shredding. If you just want to cover up one line from your bank statement, use a permanent marker to black it out and recycle the paper like you normally do.

Of course, if you don’t want to have to worry about saving the planet, we’ll do it for you. We offer confidential, secure document destruction and disposal services. We do it for an array of different media types: tapes, disks, cartridges, x-rays, HDDs, monitors, film, and of course, paper. We provide you with options that best suit your needs and we’ll make sure your confidential statements have vanished without a trace. Check out our Destruction Services page and give us a call for more information.

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