What Type of Paper Shredder is the Best?

Although shredding or destroying sensitive documents has been around for decades, the necessity of shredding or having a professional document destruction service has gained popularity in the past few decades.

“As well as size and capacity, shredders are classified according to the method they use and the size and shape of the shreds they produce. 

• Strip-cut shredders use rotating knives to cut narrow strips as long as the original sheet of paper.
• Cross-cut or confetti-cut shredders use two contra-rotating drums to cut rectangular, parallelogram, or lozenge (diamond-shaped) shreds.
• Particle-cut shredders create tiny square or circular pieces.
• Cardboard shredders are designed specifically to shred corrugated material into either strips or a mesh pallet.
• Disintegrators and granulators repeatedly cut the paper at random until the particles are small enough to pass through a mesh.
• Hammermills pound the paper through a screen.
• Pierce-and-tear shredders have rotating blades that pierce the paper and then tear it apart.
• Grinders have a rotating shaft with cutting blades that grind the paper until it is small enough to fall through a screen.
  

“The strip-cut method of shredding uses a rotating blade, which shreds paper into long strips. It is an example of cost-effective shredding equipment. However, it provides a relatively low level of security in paper shredding terms and is often not acceptable for government contracts or clients requiring more than minimal document destruction standards.”

“Cross cut shredders grew in popularity in 1979 after the American Embassy in Tehran was overrun by Iranian militants. Documents at the embassy where only strip-cut, allowing the pieces to be pieced back together by Persian carpet weavers. Due to the Iran incident, the government now requires strict shredding conditions.”

“Pierce and tear shredders use multiple blades which both punch holes into paper as well as ripping it into pieces. These types of shredders are very popular in the document destruction industry because they are able to shred a large amount of paper in a relatively short period of time.

Integra Certified Document Destruction, part of Waste-Away Group, uses the pierce and tear method of document destruction to meet and exceed the most stringent of standards to maintain its AAA NAID certification.

For more information on document and hard drive destruction visit www.wasteawaygroup.com.

paper-shredder-info.com
papershredding101.com
generalshredding.com
shredfast.com
en.wikipedia.org