Burning Paper as alternative to shredder. Other ways to securely destroy documents

Whatever you do, even now, be careful if burning it outside as its lethal at spewing paper which is smouldering everywhere.

You may be able to find a company with an industrial shredder at some cost, and you only need to do it once. Brian

There are companies that do document shedding. I went to one after lockdown with over 2 ft stack of bank statements, etc.

With a closed account, is the risk at all high if you bin all the statements before say 2020? What's the worst that can happen - someone pays your gas bill, perhaps?

A low tech way to make them unreadable is to stick them somewhere damp and let them slowly compost.

A few years ago I shredded a large amount of confidential financial paperwork - it filled several large bin bags. It took a few days because the shredder would stop working for a few hours after about half an hour's use, but I got there.

The I took it to the tip and they went ballistic when I tipped a bag into the paper/cardboard tip, because they insist the paper is *not* shredded. So I put the rest of the bags in landfill waste ;-)

could make fuel bricks out of them and burn in your wood burner?

(paper is made from trees so is wood based)

Soak it in buckets until it's mushy, then drain it, press into briquettes and allow to dry. Viola. ;-)

My dad bought a device for compressing papier mache into bricks by squeezing out the water. He tore up some paper and left it in a bucket to go soggy and then compressed it - following the instructions. The bricks never dried out, and soon smelled vile. We never did get them dry enough to be able to burn, and had to chuck them (and the compression device!) in the bin.

Viola Elizabeth Bott? the amazing instrument made out of live cat's guts?

A lot of modern paper simply will not burn. Too many things apart from wood fibre in it

HOWEVER my adventure with the 60bhp chipper did establish its quite capable of shredding paper too. So consider a garden shredder hired for a day.

Or do what I mostly do. Run it over with a rotary lawnmower till its a suitable candidate for lawn mulch.

I hesitate to say 'angle grinder', but a chain saw should make short work of a thick stack.

I had a big clear out during lockdown with nothing better to do. I actually tore out my name and address (and anything else personal etc) from statements etc, and dumped the remaining 80% ish of each paper sheet into the local paper/cardboard recycle skip. I didn't worry about stuff from three house moves (35 years) ago, except where they still related to current active accounts etc. I still had a whole black sack's worth of stuff to burn, which I did one breezy afternoon in the garden in a chiminea. Just keep feeding it in to keep the flames going. Then I left the ash to cool overnight, and dumped it at the bottom of the garden

tie it up in the cludgy on a bit of hairy string ......

Find an outfit near you similar to:

Bonfire.

Bill

How much do they charge? Their website doesn't say!

Last I looked, perhaps 2 or 3 years ago, it was £5 and you put up to 17kg of paper in the bag.

In the past I have destroyed similar amounts of paper in one of those garden dustbin incinerators BUT I first had a lot of scrap wood to burn which created a very hot layer of nearly burnt wood at the bottom of the bin - I then dumped in the paper and then filled the bin with more wood.

All that was left in the morning was a fairly thin layer of still hot ash.

You mean Violet Elizabeth Bott? I'm not aware of any other, nor is Google apparently. The Viola from Twelfth Night is a good one, but any Viola, or even viola, will do.

Many thanks for all the replies & suggestions :-)

As a result I have found companies that will shred it on my doorstep or who will send/collect a sack for shredding. I'll have to decide what it's worth - and if I go the fire route it won't be until we have had some solid rainfall!

HINT: try swapping the 'i' and the 'o' around in your first use of the word. :)