Paper Shreder
Paper Shreders were mostly used by governmental agencies up until the 1980′s. Since that time however, thanks to a supreme court ruling that trash can be searched through for documents and evidence, their popularity has grown.
It’s also been shown that in the US there are up to 9 million cases of identity theft every year.
Today the Paper Shreder industry ranges from small and inexpensive paper shreders, that are designed to shred just a few sheets of paper, right the way up to industrial size paper shreders which are capable of getting through literally a million or so documents an hour, and cost many 10′s of thousands of dollars.
Most people of course are not looking for something of that sort of size. Although, the level of security that is attached to a paper shreder goes in stages.
The stages go from 1 -6 and relate to the width that the paper is cut to. The 1-6 level is also known as the DIN level.
It breaks down as follows:
level 1 is 12mm strips, level 2 is 6mm strips, level 3 is 2mm strips. Once you get to level 3 you are looking at what is thought of as confidential documents.
level 4 is 2mm x 15mm, and is generally for commercially sensitive material. Levels 5 and 6 are top secret levels and the paper is cut into 0.8mm x 12mm, and 0.8mmx4mm respectively.
Beyond the size that each individual paper shreder cuts the pieces into, the machines are separated in several broad categories. These categories are:
Firstly, Strip Cut Shredders – these are the most basic of any of the types of shredders that are out there. They are basically rotating knives. They documents are shredded, but it is also relatively easy to put them back together again and the waste produced is the greatest.
Next there are Cross Cut Shredders. These have a pair of contra-rotating drums. The paper is cut very finely into diamond, or rectangular shaped pieces.
Particle shredders cut the documents into very small circle, or square pieces.
Then there are disintegrators and hammermills. The disintergrators randomly cut all the paper until it eventually will go through a mesh. The hammermill pounds the documents, pushing them through a screen.
The final two styles of paper shreder are the Pierce and Tear machines, and the Grinder machines
Choosing A Paper Shreder.
The things to really consider when you are looking for a paper shreder is how many sheets will you need to be able to shred comfortably. People certainly don’t want to be spending time sitting by a paper shreder feeding it sheets if they have a lot of sheets, and many other things that they could be doing.
Also people need to consider the level of confidentiality they’ll need from their shreding.
The Internet is a great place to start a search for a paper shreder. There are many different options here and quite often retailers are able to sell at significantly discounted prices compared to what might be found in normal stores. The reason for this is due to the much lower overheads that are present when people sell goods and services Online.
It really comes down to just checking as many different Online stores, or sites as possible to get the best options and deals.