Paper Shredding

[bdhsfz6]

I have no experience with using a chipper to shred paper but there are places where you can rent an industrial shredder. Might be cheaper than hiring a shredding service.

When I come across a large quantity of unwanted paperwork, I do use a burn barrel sometimes but the material needs to be added to the fire a few pages at a time or it doesn't burn completely and clumps up at the bottom of the barrel.

On a couple of occasions, for very large quantities, I dug a pit and buried it. Takes a few years but mother nature eventually takes care of it.

I also take advantage of public shredding events which take place every few years around here. Some are free and run by the county, but most charge a nominal fee.

My brother lives in a large townhouse development and once a year, the HOA hires a shredding service. They get a quantity discount and the rates are very reasonable.

This won't help for disposing of an existing mountain of material but going forward, try this:
I discovered that much of the paper I was shredding contained no sensitive information and could be recycled intact. I now keep a box next to my shredder for non sensitive documents, junk mail, etc. Sometimes, all I need to do is tear off a portion of the document that has the sensitive info and throw the rest in the recycle box. I take it to the county recycle center every few months along with bags of shredded documents.

 

[Captain Dirty]

I discovered that much of the paper I was shredding contained no sensitive information and could be recycled intact. I now keep a box next to my shredder for non sensitive documents, junk mail, etc. Sometimes, all I need to do is tear off a portion of the document that has the sensitive info and throw the rest in the recycle box

The consensus of responses is that commercial or charitable donation funded shredding services are reasonably priced peace of mind, and that DIY processes will require handling the equivalent of 4 cases of copy paper a few sheets at a time. If the OP chooses the DIY route, it will probably be no more effort to separate the sensitive info and other info into destroy and discard piles and then destroy (burn, shred, or whatever) the first pile and recycle the second pile. I have observed that wills, trusts, minutes of incorporation, etc. often consist of numerous pages of boiler plate sandwiched between a first page naming the testator, beneficiaries, donors, trustees, et al and a last page of signatures and notarization. The schedules of tax returns usually have the SSN and name across the top of each page; the rest of the page has little use for an observer. If person is deceased or a business dissolved, the bank or brokerage accounts will have been closed. bdhsfz6's approach has merit.

 

[orezok]

My local UPS store has a bin labeled shredding that you can put your documents in. I assume they have a commercial company pick it up and shred. Unfortunately its not a secure way to do it.

Some unscrupulous person could go through the bin after hours.

 

[orezok]

I wonder if you laid the docs on the ground and ran over it with a bush hog or tiller?

Isn’t that why we spend $$$$ for home shredder equipment

 

[Henro]

How quick do you have to be rid of the stuff?

Being a do it myself guy, I like the paper pulp idea. I doubt anyone will want to try to recover anything from a soggy mess. If you are in no hurry, why not try some with a five gallon bucket? If it softens up in a day or two, and you can mix it a bit, you could probably dump it on the ground and let most of the water drain out, and throw the soggy mess out in with you normal trash.

Granted probably not a good idea for top secret government stuff, but what do you really have to hide. Probably nothing that would deserve the resources necessary to recover information from a soggy paper pulp mess.

Summer might be better but winter? You could form it into frozen blocks or just into frozen plastic shopping bags...possibilities are endless...good luck.

 

[caver]

Myself and 3 other Seabees had to replace a diesel driven document destructor under the guidance of a factory rep. This was on Adak AK. This was when tractor printers were the thing for whatever top secret stuff they were destroying. The building with the red circle was where it was located. Back then we had to check in with an armed Marine to get inside the fence. So they had stacks and stacks of these tractor printouts. The opening was about the size of a laptop screen. The diesel had like a lever clutch. Very thick steel on this industrial paper shredder. The rep threw a short 2x4 in and instant splinters. He said at the plant they would test them with bowling balls old antique typewriters just to see what would break it.

 

[JasperFrank]

Yes, this will work, had the same issue a few years ago. About 40 Reams. In binders. I took the pages out first, and only feed a thumbs width at a time. Mixed with other wood chips, and you are good. I resold the binders. There is no recovery of info this way. I looked to be sure. The problem with sensitive docs is WHERE you dispose of them and if you dispose of them in whole and in context.

 

[Cycledude]

Heat my home with wood furnace so it’s pretty easy to burn a little paper once in a while , banks around here occasionally offer free paper shredding but I have never tried that.

 

[CH4Ohio]

If a chipper would shred paper, people would also use them to shred fallen leaves this time of year. Since they don’t, it won’t.

Pull a chair up close to a burn barrel or fire ring and crumple handfuls as you throw it in. If kids are available you’ll be a hero!

Take it to a recycle place that offers shredding service.

No way would I consider trying to render it down to pulp.

 

[ejnichol]

Much of it can be categorized as who cares and send it to the landfill.

Really doubt somebodies prowling through your trash or at the landfill looking for this data amongst all the smelly crap. More risk on line etcc.. That's a very inefficient way to harvest data and only data thats valuable is SS# and bank accounts #'s. Modern statements redact most of it anyway. Old documents with SS# and old wills maybe.

I burn mine in my biannual burn pile even at 3 box fulls. I use an accelerant to start it and it burns hot and not much survives that and then I turn it over when its approachable and 99 % its ash then.

 

[mikester]

Burn barrel only works if you stand there the whole time feeding only 1 page at a time. If you are trying to burn banker's boxes worth of files forget it. The paper bundles just char on the outside and inside all your documents will be perfectly readable and remain intact.

Look for a local company that does on site shredding using a self contained truck. They usually charge $20-40 per bankers box to shred at your site. These trucks have shredders that will shred complete phone book or encyclopedia sized items including all bindings like staples and paperclips.

Your wood chipper will handle wood but choke on paper and bindings. It won't chip the paper into little bits.

 

[grsthegreat]

Burn barrel only works if you stand there the whole time feeding only 1 page at a time. If you are trying to burn banker's boxes worth of files forget it. The paper bundles just char on the outside and inside all your documents will be perfectly readable and remain intact.

Look for a local company that does on site shredding using a self contained truck. They usually charge $20-40 per bankers box to shred at your site. These trucks have shredders that will shred complete phone book or encyclopedia sized items including all bindings like staples and paperclips.

Your wood chipper will handle wood but choke on paper and bindings. It won't chip the paper into little bits.

Nonesence, ive been using burn barrels for years. I just stand there and throw in crumpled pages just about as fast as i can while burning. I empty box full of paper pretty quickly. About 12 hrs later theres just a pile of ash. Than i fill barrel with water. Barrel has holes in bottom. Next day just a pile of mush. That mush goes into dump trailer. No one is getting anything out of that mess.

 

[Sprinkler Fitter]

Bonfire?

That is what we typically do. We have an outdoor fireplace on our patio. We burn anything we don’t want to just throw into the garbage as far as private paperwork, but we never burned garbage in there.

 

[sandman2234]

My Bride worked at home and generated a lot of paper that had to be shredded. I would set the shredder next to my easy chair and run paper thru it during the commercials when fast forwarding wasn't allowed. It isn't like there is a hurry to get it done, and why stand around a hot fire when you can be sitting in your easy chair!
David from jax

 

[Sprinkler Fitter]

My Bride worked at home and generated a lot of paper that had to be shredded. I would set the shredder next to my easy chair and run paper thru it during the commercials when fast forwarding wasn't allowed. It isn't like there is a hurry to get it done, and why stand around a hot fire when you can be sitting in your easy chair!
David from jax

We have a hot fire outside most weekends here in Minnesota from about now until March.

 

[Jstpssng]

Here's my shredder.

 

[mikester]

Nonesence, ive been using burn barrels for years. I just stand there and throw in crumpled pages just about as fast as i can while burning. I empty box full of paper pretty quickly. About 12 hrs later theres just a pile of ash. Than i fill barrel with water. Barrel has holes in bottom. Next day just a pile of mush. That mush goes into dump trailer. No one is getting anything out of that mess.

Come on over, I have a couple dozen bankers boxes for you to crumple up every sheet and burn. BTW they are mostly bound documents. Enjoy!

 

[Gem99ultra]

Burn barrel

Burn barrel doesn't work; ask me how I know In fact, trying to burn stacks doesn't work either. The top couple of sheets will burn but then the fire pretty much fizzles out.

Commercial shredders such as the UPS Stores charge $1.00 per pound. Sadly, I found 3 more boxs full of old documents. Total weight is something like 350#. That's a lot of money for papers that I don't want any longer. Yeah, I'm paying the price for previous laziness.

 

[Gem99ultra]

How quick do you have to be rid of the stuff?

Being a do it myself guy, I like the paper pulp idea. I doubt anyone will want to try to recover anything from a soggy mess. If you are in no hurry, why not try some with a five gallon bucket? If it softens up in a day or two, and you can mix it a bit, you could probably dump it on the ground and let most of the water drain out, and throw the soggy mess out in with you normal trash.

Granted probably not a good idea for top secret government stuff, but what do you really have to hide. Probably nothing that would deserve the resources necessary to recover information from a soggy paper pulp mess.

Summer might be better but winter? You could form it into frozen blocks or just into frozen plastic shopping bags...possibilities are endless...good luck.

Nothing to hide of my own stuff actually. I've not been careful at all in discarding my own documents. (Don't tell my spouse, but I usually just toss my old documents in the garbage can.) Spouse, having had a career in the legal field, is close to paranoid about anything with our name, address, phone numbers, and especially anything related to financial documents.
She's spent just about 2 full days feeding a little home-size shredder. Her efforts yielded shredded about 2–50-gallon trash bags of shredded paper, which I then burned in the burn barrel. I might add, she's in no mood to shred much more single sheet shredding, at that rate.
Thanks for the heads-up on trying to run my stacks through my woodchipper. That probably saved my mental coheiress by a lot. My great ideas sometimes (usually) have flaws.
It's looking like I may as well fork up a few bucks and pay the piper.