Los Angeles Paper Shredding
By now, most businesses and households are accustomed to recycling paper, cardboard and beverage containers. But don’t forget about DVDs and CDs. As many of us transition away from disc media like CDs and DVDs in favor of flash drives and other removable media, many optical discs wind up in the trash can, and ultimately, in the land fill. Compact discs and DVDs, however, are indeed made out of plastic. But unlike bottles and other containers, they do not include the chasing arrows and number symbol that indicates the type of plastic and whether or not it is recyclable, which leads many to believe that they are not. In fact, many curbside pickup recyclers do not accept CDs and DVDs. That’s because if they were to bear such a symbol, they would be shown as Number 7 plastics. Number 7 plastics, such as computer cases, nylon, 3- and 5-gallon water bottles and sunglass lenses fall into the difficult to distinguish “other” category.
If you’re a concerned parent, you may recognize number 7 plastics as the category to which polycarbonate products, including DVDs, belong to. Polycarbonate has been controversial lately since studies show that they leach bisphenol A into food and water. Bisphenol A, or BPA, has been shown to be harmful to infants and fetuses. Because of this, it is particularly important to keep number 7 plastics out of landfills and dispose of them sustainable so that they do not contaminate water that can eventually cycle back into habitats or drinking water supplies.
At Go Green Mobile Shredding, we shred and recycle all types of e-waste and digital media, including CDs, DVDs, hard drives, tape drives, floppy disks, zip disks and Blu-ray discs. This is not only greener for the Earth, it’s safer for your colleagues and customers. CDs and DVDs, even heavily scratched or damaged CDs and DVDs, contain readable data that is physically etched into the media. A persistent identity thief could extract data from optical media and recover personal information from it for unscrupulous means. So, when you shred your CDs, DVDs, hard drives and other e-waste, you’re not just helping the environment, you’re protecting the privacy of your community members.
If you’re interested in doing more to conserve the environment and keep your sensitive data secure, give us a call at (877) 821-0217 and ask about our on-site mobile shredding.
Do It Yourself Paper Shredding Risks
Shredding paper seems like a simple task—especially when you can pick up an office paper shredder at any big box store. Operating a small paper shredder requires about as much technical expertise as running a copy machine, which convinces many managers to relegate the task of shredding sensitive documents to menial office laborers. But your internal document destruction procedure may not be as secure or cost effective as you think. Here’s why:
Paper Shredding on the Clock is Costly
When factoring in the costs of handling paper shredding on-site, you have to consider the payroll costs in addition to the equipment costs. That shredder may have only cost you a few hundred dollars, but how much is that high level employee getting paid to shred papers for eight hours every week? This is a classic case of wasted resources.
Low Level Employees Can’t Be Trusted
As a solution to the cost effectiveness conundrum above, managers may opt to charge interns, temps or part-timers with the task of shredding paper. However, these workers have the least loyalties to the company and may opt for short cuts (i.e. putting it in a dumpster rather than shredding it) or other ambitious applications (i.e. selling information to competitors or the media).
Disposal Must Be Documented
To properly cover your bases and protect yourself from liability, destruction of confidential documents should be documented. This includes: the date and time of the destruction, the means of destruction, the place of destruction, the name of the person who performed the destruction and the signature of a manager verifying the destruction. With these added logistical duties, the task of shredding paper becomes all the more time-consuming and complex. And if you forgo these steps, you won’t be doing your due diligence in protecting the privacy of your company and clients.
Underpowered On-Site Shredders are Less Secure
Although shredded documents are more difficult for would-be identity thieves to read, a determined criminal can piece together information from shredded paper using scanners and software. This is especially feasible when the shredded paper hasn’t been intermingled with other documents. Furthermore, most office shredders cut the paper into strips. A more secure method for shredding paper is to pierce and tear the paper into tiny, irrecoverable pieces.
Shredding On-Site May Be Unsustainable
Because shredded paper is ungainly and difficult to handle, many municipal recycling facilities won’t accept shredded paper for curbside pickup. Because of this, many business owners choose to dispose of shredded office paper instead of recycling it, which equals a significant missed opportunity for the environment.
Contrary to popular belief, tasking one or more of your own employees to handle paper shredding is neither a shortcut nor a cost-saving measure. At Go Green Mobile Shredding, we can offer you affordable on-site shredding that is more secure, faster and easier than the vast majority of DIY shredding schemes.
Call (877) 821-0218 to find out how we can save you time and money.
Paper waste makes up a massive amount of what ends up in our landfills each year. Not only that, the paper making process—which involves heavy machinery to cultivate trees, more heavy machinery to harvest them, trucks to haul them to the pulping factory and tons of industrial waste to process the wood into paper—has a significant impact on our air, water and land resources. Offices can play a large role in lessening the environmental implications of paper use by following three key principles: reduce, reuse, recycle.
Reduce Your Paper Use
Email and other electronic communication have gone a long way in reducing intra-office paper use. But if you’re still circulating hard copies of memos, distributing thick packets for projects and posting flyers throughout the office, there’s still much progress to be made. Unnecessary printing and copying also accounts for a vast amount of paper use in an office, and by centralizing your printing, rather than assigning each department its own printer, you can help reduce waste and boost efficiency. Assign an administrative assistant or department head as a gatekeeper to the printer and employees will think twice about printing out a document—plus, when they do need a big job done, the menial work will be handed off to someone more suited to the job, so they can focus on what they are best at.
Reuse Office Paper
For non-sensitive documents, the blank backside of a sheet is an obvious opportunity for reusing paper. Keep a stack or basket for paper with one-side printed and either feed it back into a printer for internal use or keep it in the conference room for use as scratch paper. Scratch paper is just as handy as a notepad for taking down notes for meetings and it’ll cost you less overall.
Recycle Instead of Discarding
Recycling enjoyed a brief heyday before the risk of identity theft and strict HIPAA and FACTA requirements put a damper on the practice. When it comes to saving the Earth versus protecting your company from liability and your clients from identity theft, many office managers opt for shredding and disposal, rather than risking a document becoming compromised at the recycling facility. But with on-site mobile shredding, you can have the best of both worlds. Go Green Mobile Shredding can come straight to your door to destroy your sensitive and non-sensitive documents right before your eyes. Then, we’ll haul it to a certified recycling facility so it can be sustainably processed.
When it comes to going green at the office, a few simple steps can go a long way. For more information on how Go Green Mobile Shredding can help your office reduce its ecological footprint, give us a call.
Anyone who’s seen a heist movie knows that valuables become most vulnerable in transit. While the proprietary information, company records and client data harbored within your office walls may not be as glamorous as crown jewels or as epic as government gold bars, protecting them from identity thieves, corporate spies and other malicious parties is just as important. The relocation of your office poses a plethora of security challenges—but it also provides opportunities for strengthening your company’s data security and record retention policies. Consider the following as you prepare to move your business.
Move Less, Spend Less, Risk Less
Movers don’t come for cheap, and each box of sensitive records that leaves your loading dock is another liability on the open road. Since your employees and archivists will already be sifting through file boxes and old records, take this time to shred what’s outdated, no longer needed or past the threshold where you are legally obligated to retain it. At Go Green Mobile Shredding, we recommend that office managers call us ahead of time and let us know that they’re planning a purge. We can drop off as many secure lockboxes as you need so your employees can deposit their sensitive documents as they clean out their desks and work areas. Then, we can pick them up and shred them on site, lightening your load and lessening your security risks.
Old Electronics are Treasure Troves for Identity Thieves
Hard Drive Photo Before
Hard Drive Photo After
Moving out often means moving up, and your new facility may feature all new technology and computers. But instead of leaving your discarded computer towers, servers and copiers on the curb, do your duty in disposing of them properly. Even hard drives that have been wiped clean or formatted can still contain residual data, such as Social Security numbers, customer lists and credit card information. And if you leave them in a dumpster, donate them or have a garage sale, you’re essentially relinquishing control of that information. For example, if a competitor obtains company secrets by picking up your discarded hard drive at Goodwill, you’ll have very little legal recourse since you willfully handed it over. While it may seem like a charitable act to give your old computer equipment a second life, it may be one of those good deeds that doesn’t go unpunished. For the best security, gather up all of your old media—including hard drives, DVDs, CDs, tape drives, zip disks, laptops and cell phones—and let
Go Green Mobile Shredding destroy them. We’ll shred them right on site and bring them to a certified recycling facility where they’ll be sustainably put to good use without unduly harming the ecosystem or putting your company or clients at risk.
Keep Tabs on All Your Documents
Sometimes, a move coincides with a shift in your workforce. Disgruntled or opportunistic ex-employees may be tempted to pilfer research data, marketing plans or vendor agreements and take them to their next venture. In fact, most compromised data leaks internally, since the employees are the ones who can most readily identify which documents are valuable. Make a checklist of all sensitive information and hold employees accountable. Ensure that they shred what needs to be disposed or securely box and seal anything you want to take to your next location.
Hire a Mobile Shredding Service to Save Time
Moves are hectic by nature, but the hassle is often compounded by time crunches as well. While your office may have a shredder or two on site, with so many employees packing up and cleaning out their desks, it’s unlikely that you’ll have enough shredding power to get everything destroyed on time. At Go Green, on the other hand, our mobile shredding trucks can process 3 tons of material in less than an hour. Our trucks can turn an 8 hour job into a 1 hour job, making your move less of a headache.
Moving day can be a logistical nightmare—but don’t put data security on the backburner. For file purges, cleanouts and big jobs, call Go Green Mobile Shredding to make your life easier.
Paper Recycling Impact
You may have heard statistics claiming that logging companies plant more trees than they harvest each year. But factoids like this are misleading, especially in light of the impacts that “planted forests” used primarily for paper production have on our environment. When timber enterprises plant trees, the goal is not the re-establishment of natural habitats. Instead, old growth forests are replaced with a single species of fast growing, high yield trees. Such monoculture forests cannot sustain biodiversity. Also, since they are intended for harvest, these trees do not provide the benefits of terrestrial carbon sequestration (i.e. when trees remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by absorbing it). For these reasons and others, the World Rainforest Movement (WRM) has come to characterize tree monocultures not as forests, but “green deserts.” According to WRM, tree plantations also compete for land and water resources with local villagers, making it difficult for indigenous peoples to secure drinking water and raise crops for food.
Closer to home, an initiative spearheaded by the Stop GE Trees Campaign, Global Justice Ecology Project and the Dogwood Alliance has raised awareness about the possible impacts of genetically engineered eucalyptus trees being planted in several states across the U.S. Eucalyptus trees are wildly invasive and can spread into native ecosystems and displace wildlife. The oil in eucalyptus trees is also highly flammable. Their pervasiveness contributes to rampant forest fire problems throughout California. As such, the members of the Stop GE Trees Campaign have filed a suit seeking to bar ArborGen from moving forward with its plans for several plantations composed of genetically modified eucalyptus trees.
While the costs vs. benefits of tree plantations are highly controversial, one thing is clear: an acre of cultivated trees is not equivalent to an acre of old growth forest or rainforest. Because the implications of replacing diverse, natural habitats with tree monocultures are not yet fully understood, it’s prudent for our society to lessen our reliance on forests planted for harvesting.
To this end, paper recycling can play a large role. According to the National Recycling Coalition, one tree is saved for each three-foot high stack of newspapers that is recycled. At Go Green Mobile Shredding, our mobile shredding trucks can shred up to 3 tons (6,000 pounds) of paper in a single hour. We haul all of our paper to a certified recycling facility where it’s saved from the landfill and put to sustainable use. Imagine how many trees your office could save in a year!
For more information on paper recycling and mobile shredding, call Go Green Mobile Shredding at (877) 821-0217.
