What can I put in my shredding bags and bins?
If you’re considering outsourcing your shredding services to an accredited supplier, you may be wondering what you can or cannot put in your shredding bags and bins.
Here is our guide to what can typically go in your bags, boxes or bins for shredding. Please note that shredding suppliers may vary in their service offerings, so please ask your supplier if this list applies to them. Or, even better, get in touch with our team for a quick quote!
Confidential Paper Shredding
The below items are fine to put in your boxes, bins or bags for paper shredding:
- Office paper of all kinds
- All weights of paper, from newspaper weight (c.35gsm) to cardstock (450gsm)
- Coloured paper
- Envelopes both with and without the plastic windows
- Exercise books and textbooks (no need to remove the covers)
- Newspapers
- Magazines
With Shred Station, there is no need to remove staples, paper clips, plastic wallets, or even lever arch files. Our industrial shredders can shred it all.
There are, however, some things you shouldn’t put in your shredding bins.
- General waste
- Food waste or paper contaminated with food
- Tissues
- Polystyrene
- Metal objects (apart from paper clips, lever arch files, staples and bulldog clips)
- Electrical/electronic items
- Aerosols
- Batteries
- Hazardous waste
These materials can affect our ability to recycle the rest of your paperwork. Some items could even cause a fire when going through our shredding machines!
Confidential Media Shredding
We don’t just shred paperwork. We can shred just about anything! One of our other popular services is media shredding. If you’re an organisation that produces a lot of media waste, we can provide bins and containers to house your materials before destruction. Here are the things that can go into your media bins:
- CDs and DVDs
- Back-up and data tapes
- Video and audio tapes
- X-Rays
- Photographic film and microfiche
- USBs and memory sticks.
Here are things that you shouldn’t put in your media container. We can collect and destroy some of these items, but they would need to be kept separate from your paper or media materials. We have marked these items with an asterisk.
- Mobile phones*
- Hard drives*
- Laptops / Computers*
- Waste electrical items*
- Aerosols
- Batteries
- Hazardous waste.
Please feel free to print off our posters to help your teams remember what can and cannot be shredded as part of your shredding service. If there are items you’re unsure about, please feel free to give us a call.
Download the paper shredding poster here.
Download the media shredding poster here.
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