Shred Days, free confidential document shredding (2024)

FAQs

Can you shred confidential documents? ›

Shredding individual confidential documents is a process that can take a very long time. However this process is a crucial part of protecting the data and personal information of the people you work with.

Preparing Documents for Shredding

The short answer is no; you don't have to remove staples and paper clips before shredding your documents. Most modern shredders, especially heavy-duty and commercial-grade models, are designed to handle small metal items such as staples and paper clips without any issues.

Best Ways to Dispose of Private Materials

Soak papers in water and bleach to create a pulp. Let the pulp dry, then dispose of it. Overwrite, degauss (demagnetize), or physically destroy hard drives to dispose of digital documents.

Destruction can be accomplished several ways: either in-house recycling, shredding, or confidential destruction; using the State Records Center (SRC) or Document Destruction Center (DDC); or through a contracted vendor.

All Shred-it locations in North America have received NAID Certification for mobile document destruction. You're already familiar with HIPAA and why your patients' protected health information must be kept private.

If possible, consider recycling your shredded documents, as long as you can do this without leaving the data easily available to others during that time. Alternatively, you could use a shredding service. Companies will come to your business, collect the documents and safely shred them for you.

Drop Off Shredding: The price for this service will vary by location, but it's typically around $1 per pound for drop off shredding services. Mobile Shredding: The price to have a shred truck visit your location varies by location, quantity, and other factors.

Burning paperwork can also produce acrolein, ammonia, and other fumes from inks, dyes, and chemicals. As well as being potentially detrimental to health, these fumes can negatively impact the environment. The other clear advantage of shredding rather than burning is recyclability.

Soaking paper documents in water for one or two days and mixing it around is an effective way to make them unreadable. This dissolves the paper into a pulp that you can break up by hand. However, you'll need the space and patience to leave your documents in buckets of water in a secure place.

Can you soak paper instead of shredding? ›

Another alternative is by soaking the confidential documents into a bucket of water. But this needs a lot of patience because the documents need to be soaked for at least 24 hours for them to become unreadable. After 24 hours, you can start thoroughly mixing the paper until they effectively break up.

Our unique technology can even destroy other materials like fabric, plastic, electronics and metals. Yes, that means CDs, USB drives, videotapes, DVDs and even casino chips.

Never try to force electronic devices and accessories into the standard paper shredder. We often use items like flash drives, CDs, and more in the office, but the standard shredder cannot handle non-paper materials like these.

All Shred-it locations in North America have received NAID Certification for mobile document destruction. You're already familiar with HIPAA and why your patients' protected health information must be kept private.

Keep all confidential information in a secure place. Do not leave it lying on your desk top or anywhere it can be easily accessed by unauthorized persons. It is best to keep it in a locked drawer or file cabinet. You may be asked to return all confidential information, or destroy it at the option of the owner.

Classified waste disposal requires destroying government documents to prevent release of their contents. The three primary methods used by the Federal Government to destroy classified documents are incineration, shredding or milling (dry process), and pulping (wet process).

HIPAA compliant shredding requires you to shred documents and hard drives so that they are not only unreadable but also can't be recreated. That means using a professional service like ours, since home and office shredders don't achieve those goals.