Shredded Paper Recycling 101

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Every year, SecurShred recycles thousands of tons of shredded paper.

The paper media, that is collected from our customers, is securely destroyed using our certified shredding equipment.

The secure chain of custody of paper from our customers’ location to the time when it is turned into pulp is an important process for some people.  This is why SecurShred bales all of its own shredded paper and seals the trailer before transport and has an agreement in place with the mill for the responsible disposal of destroyed material. Ensuring a secure chain of custody of your confidential information is a top priority of SecurShred.The vast majority of our destruction of paper media is performed on-site using one of our mobile shredding trucks.  All shredded paper media is transported and unloaded at our South Burlington, Vermont secure warehouse.  At this certified warehouse, the shredded paper is baled and loaded onto a trailer.  Once full, the trailer is sealed and transported to a domestic paper mill for recycling.  Once at the mill, the bales of shredded paper are under security watch until they are loaded into a machine that turns the paper into pulp for eventual processing into tissue paper products.  Once processed, the recycled paper products are then redistributed throughout local communities. Common household goods being shipped from the paper mill include paper towels, facial tissues and toilet paper.

What about the staples and paperclips?

Many of our customers ask us what can go into the shredder and what can go into their shredding bin.  As a rule of thumb, material other than paper should be avoided.  However, it is completely acceptable to place paper containing staples, paperclips, binder clips and envelope windows into the bin.  Try to avoid placing confidential material in the bin that contains more than a handful of plastic, brown cardstock or cardboard.  This type of material is considered a contaminated substance and the mill will only accept a bale of paper with less than 4% of this material.  This contaminant material is removed during the pulping process using screens and, possibly, magnets.  If our customers have non-paper media for destruction such as pill bottles, product, tapes, hard drives and uniforms, we ask that they do not mix this material with their paper media. Instead we encourage putting this material into its own bin for collection. Our security professionals will record the weight or count of this material, lock it in the SecurShred vehicle and transport it to our secure facility for destruction.  Every effort will be made to recycle as much destroyed non-paper media as possible.  However, some material can’t currently be recycled.

Some interesting facts about paper recycling:

  • Every 150 pounds of recycled shredded paper saves 1 tree.
  • Each ton (2000 pounds) of recycled paper can save 14 trees, 380 gallons of oil, three cubic yards of landfill space, 4000 kilowatts of energy, and 7000 gallons of water. This represents a 64% energy savings, a 58% water savings, and 60 pounds less of air pollution!
  • The 14 trees saved (above) can absorb a total of 250 pounds of carbon dioxide from the air each year. Burning that same ton of paper would create 1500 pounds of carbon dioxide.
  • Each ton of mixed paper that is recycled can save the energy equivalent to 185 gallons of gasoline.
  • New boxes, office paper, paper towels, toilet paper, tissues, insulation, cereal boxes, kitty litter, newspapers and molded packaging are some of the products made from recycled paper.

Reference

On-site – at a particular place especially of business.

Off-site – not located or occurring at the site of a particular activity.

Cardboard Properties – Cardboard is created using each of the tree sheets that go into the making of corrugated cardboard. Each of these sheets has a higher fiber, and courser grain content that paper. Typically it’s made with pulp deemed un-usable for paper that is not “beaten” like it is in a blender. The fibers are indeed longer and much coarser than those used to make paper. It is bonded together into sheets through a higher temp and pressure process to make it stronger and less chemically processed meaning more of the wood “glue” called lignin has been washed out.

David Van Mullen, SecurShred Vice President, CERTIFIED SECURE DESTRUCTION SPECIALIST ®

March 2, 2012