What Can and Can’t Go in a Shred Collection Container

Just when you think you’ve figured out what goes in the rainbow of refuse containers, your shredding company offers to supply you with shred collection containers to keep your discarded sensitive documents in until they come to shred them. If you’re thinking, “Great, yet another type of container to manage,” we get it! Read on to learn why this type of container will benefit your business and actually make your life easier.

Shred Collection Containers are Good News!

Astute business owners know they are responsible for the security of all private information handled by their organization. Your company may have all the right practices in place to accomplish this, but without locked shred collection containers where your staff can discard documents between shredding services, you’re still wide open to a data breach.

What can I put into a shred collection container?

For best practices in hard-copy information security, adopt a “shred everything” policy. This takes the decision process out of the hands of your employees, so they know that if it’s paper with anything printed or written on it, it goes in the shred collection container, period.

Easy, right? Eventually, however, some employees may even be tempted to discard items in the shred collection container that aren’t meant to be shredded, and can even damage shredding equipment.

Below we share an easy guide for what can and can’t go in a shred collection container.

Drop These Items IN the Shred Collection Container

1. Confidential paper documents that contain Personally Identifiable Information (PII), including name, Social Security Number, driver license, mailing address, credit card, passport, financial information, medical records, race, gender, date of birth, place of birth, religion, or any information that can be linked to individuals.
2. Sensitive documents like personal or business letters, official papers, boarding passes, bank statements, and more.
3. Other paper items like file folders, notebooks, and other paperbound publications can also be put in.
4. Black carbon paper should go in separate shred collector from office paper.
5. Paper fasteners like staples and paperclips can be left on files as industrial-strength shredders can shred these items, too.
6. By shredding all paper with or without sensitive information on it, you will alleviate the need to decide what information should be shredded or not, helping you prevent a dreaded data breach. It will also keep these papers out of the trash can and landfill and allow them to be pulped and recycled along with everything else you have shredded.

Leave These Items OUT of the Shred Collection Container

1. Trash such as plastic, Styrofoam, food wrappers, and metal cans.
2. Corrugated and cardboard should not go into the shred container.
3. Hard-bound books. Books or publications with a hard cover cannot be shredded. Ask your shredding company about how to discard these items.
4. General recycling. Because shredded documents are sent to the paper recycling plant, items that can go in the general recycling bin may seem like a good fit for the shred collection container. However, these items aren’t meant to be shredded and should be put into a separate recycling bin instead of the shred collection container.
5. Electronics and hard drives. These items are also recyclable but they cannot be placed in the paper shred collection container. Ask about our hard drive shredding and other media shredding and how to securely collect these items for destruction.

What type of shred collection containers do I need?

To make it easy for employees to use the shred collection containers and discourage dropping private information in the recycling or trash bin, your shredding company can help you determine where best to place the containers throughout your facility. They should also offer different styles of shred collection containers to match your needs.

Shred Boss in Roswell, NM offers lockable, tamper-evident shred collection collectors in various styles as part of our scheduled shredding service. On a schedule designed to fit your needs, our professional, uniformed, background-screened shred technician will shred the contents of the collectors.

We are proudly NAID AAA Certified so you can be confident that your sensitive documents are in safe hands and properly destroyed. For more information about our shredding services or to receive a free quote, simply call us at 575-347-4733 or complete the form on this page