Rexel sell a shredder that takes a large number (maybe 80?) of A4 sheets in one go & slowly shreds them. Not especially a recommendation but an option. Feeding a handful into a crosscut shredder each day is sometimes acceptable. Making papercrete consumes lots fast. A 2 speed mains drill with paint mixing blade is about the minimum equipment, some folk have also found a pressure washer works. Or burn them.
Not entirely sure what point you are making... which company is your better recommendation? (than this one that has been trading for 40 years)
What (useful) information will be gained from old credit card and bank statements? If you have ever paid anyone by cheque almost all the same information will be 'out there' somewhere.
Yesterday I got the council tax demand letter (up 5.27% on last year)
It came with a glossy booklet that informed me that I COULD put shredded paper in my blue paper recycling box.
I have one. It keeps jamming.
Get two TA soldiers who missed their summer camp this year . Have them ostensibly clearing out a storeroom but in reality all they do is dispose of "classified" documents (instruction books things like that ie classified not secret). Then have them burn every piece of books leaflets etc. This takes A G E S(pages ripped out etc) but is good enough for the British army. This took two days 8hours a day.
So assuming a few dozen is 48.
48 * 52 = 2496 pages a year. Probably easier to burn a few dozen pages a week but that is a really long term project and isn't likely to quickly clear the storage space.Checking on Amazon one box of office printer paper is 5 reams of 500 sheets, so that gives a size estimate of a year's worth of a few dozen papers a week.
I estimate that there is considerably more than that to dispose of.
So nice try, but no cigar.
Cheers
Dave R
We are thinking we would be more comfortable with the companies which come to your house and shred the papers in the truck whilst you watch.
Probably OK to just give a company some bags of papers, but more reassuring if you can see them go into the shredder.
Cheers
Dave R
In September my cleaner mentioned that the top doors of the fitted wardrobes in the bedrooms were all jammed. It was because the stuff in the loft was bending the joists. I decided that I really would have to clear out the loft. It was absolutely rammed with stuff, and another thing was, I just couldn't leave it as a problem for the kids. The problem was that there were lots of items of great sentimental value, and quite a few of significant financial value, all mixed in with a lot of junk. I started work, doing a few hours each days. I had to increase the area that had a floor so that I could move stuff around as I sorted it. I bought 30 plastic storage boxes (500 x 350 x 350) and sorted stuff that needed keeping into categories. I labelled each box. Large items didn’t go into the boxes; they were wrapped in polythene and labelled. I left a lot of already-sorted stuff in its existing boxes. I realised that since 1972 I had been putting the accounts for each year into the loft, and when the loft couldn't take any more I’d filled the spare bedroom. I put all this paperwork into black sacks. There was also a lot of paperwork from our family’s university courses. Weighing a sample of the sacks showed that halfway through the job I had 600kg of paperwork to dispose of. I didn’t weigh the rest but it would have been about the same.
I put the sacks and also some other miscellaneous junk into a trailer and took three loads to the middle of the back yard, where I added it to a heap of old doors, etc. On Nov 5th I poured 10 litres of paraffin onto the heap and when it had time to soak through I threw in a match. The bonfire party went very well. The fire went out completely on the 7th. We used magnets to get the steel out.
I finally finished work in the loft between Christmas and the New Year.
As one result of the hours spend on my knees in the loft I developed bursitis and my pre-existing osteo-arthritis got much worse. I couldn't walk right through January, and I'm still suffering.
Bill
How large was the amount of paper and the container, and how much bleach?
I assume that this is to blank out the ink not to destroy the paper.
The volume of paper would probably fill at least a medium sized water butt and there would then be the problem of disposing of the HCl or bleach through the local drainage system.
Plus disposing of the contaminated paper unless that was also thoroughly rinsed first.
Just checked and 25l of HCl 36% is over £80 before shipping so that is the starting point. Assuming that 25l would be enough to treat a large volume of paper.
The manual handling is a big issue for any local destruction.
It is possible to do a little bit every day over and extended period but life is to short.
Cheers
Dave R
In security terms, aggregation of data increases the value/risk. So a detailed list of all your expenditure over several years gives a very strong profile which could facilitate identity theft (for example).
Cheers
Dave R
Not seen any that do that... the plant for shredding on an industrial scale is fairly large and the volumes of waste produced huge.
Perhaps - but if the firm has been around for a while, and works to recognised standards and security checks all staff, that is probably about the best you will get unless you DIY.
(you also have better tin knickers if you hand it over to a "proper" firm since it will be harder for you to *prove* that the destruction was compete and total if you did it yourself).
Out there but distributed in many different organisations records and archives.
A bank statement brings together a list of multiple organisation that you deal with in one document. The information can make a pretext for a scam more believable, and might also give enough information for get through some security checks. Think about how some bank verifications can run - say "name a supermarket that you shop from weekly" etc.
Iron mountain do, truck turns up, gathers all the locking "bins" and shreds contents onsite before leaving. Probably would work out expensive for once-a-decade type shredding at home?
Fantasy and no one is going to go to that much trouble.
A few years ago, every couple of weeks, a truck would pull up outside our house and make a bit of machinery type noise for a few minutes. As I worked from home, this was a slight annoyance. One day I went downstairs and saw that it was a paper shredding company, and I bothered to call them and ask if they could do whatever they were doing elsewhere and not on the DYLs outside. They were very polite and said they'd look into it.
Turns out my neighbour, some sort of financial adviser who also worked from home, was using their services.
Sympathy on the knee front. I now only kneel down in work trousers with padded knees. This is one reason that I am reluctant to take on anything that involves long term kneeling. [See other DIY threads.]
Your solution and that of TNP seem to rely on having a really large space and an existing structure of other inflammables to help burn the paperwork.
I do have a dust bin incinerator but I am very reluctant to use it except in ideal conditions because of the nuisance it can cause to close neighbours.
This is why I am trying to offload the main part of the work.
Cheers
Dave R
I don't think I'm up to 1.2 tonnes, but I have paperwork and old electronics/radio/computing magazines going back to before I was born.
I presume most of the magazines are scanned and archived, anyone know if there's a list of "missing editions" that I could check against before disposing of the lot?
Here is a good place to start:
Yes, I've seen that (and another good one I can't remember) but it's a list of what they have got, I'm more looking for a list of what they haven't got ...
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