You probably already know about the convenience of a shredding service, but did you know there are environmental benefits to having your documents securely shredded?
When you choose to have your confidential files destroyed by FileShred you’re doing more than ensuring a safe and secure way of preventing private information from getting into the hands of identity thieves. It’s also a great way to contribute to helping the environment. The benefits document of destruction services extend beyond the importance of information security. Here’s how they help the globe, too!
Paper is still important to the operation of any business. The average employee uses 10,000 sheets of paper each year. In the United States, that equates to about 4 million tons of copy paper annually. The number of trees that have to be harvested plus all the natural resources needed to turn the trees into paper is enormous, not to mention the costs. There are labor costs, fuel costs, transport costs, machine costs, chemical costs, and more. Producing paper also contributes to our carbon footprint. The fossil fuels and chemicals used for cutting down trees, transporting them, and transforming them into paper are also negatively affecting our environment with greenhouse gases.
You Can Help!
There is a way you can help reduce the need to consume these natural resources. That’s to shred your documents!
When you hire a professional document destruction company, like FileShred, all of the papers that are shredded are recycled. The shredded paper is sent to paper mills that process your destroyed documents to turn them back into paper pulp. That paper pulp is evaluated for the quality of the different types of paper that has been mixed together so they can decide what paper products it would be best used for. The recycled paper is used to make paper towels, tissues, note paper, and a host of other paper products.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, just one ton of recycled shredded paper saves the following natural resources:
- 17 trees from being harvested
- 360 gallons of water
- Reduce landfill usage by 3.3 cubic yards
- Eliminates the emission of 60 pounds of pollutants
- Saves 10,400 kilowatts of electricity
- Every ton of paper recycled can save the energy equivalent of 165 gallons of gasoline.
- Reduced carbon footprint
Other Uses of Recycle Shredded Documents
Styrofoam has historically been made with petroleum derivatives. Petroleum-based Styrofoam production is naturally harmful to the earth. However, there is an alternative. When recycled shredded paper is used to produce styrofoam-type products it dramatically reduces the negative effect on the environment.
All the Paper We Shred is Recycled
FileShred recycles 100% of the documents we destroy. None of the personal files or business records we shred are ever sent to a landfill. That’s not the case if you put any of your papers into the regular trash. It’s safer for you and the environment if you shred all your documents.
Start Green Shredding Today
We offer two ways for residents and businesses in Connecticut to take advantage of destroying documents in an environmentally friendly way, one-time or scheduled shredding.
One-time shredding is when you need to dispose of confidential files in a secure manner, but you don’t need to do it that often. If you need to clean out old files at home that you’ve been holding onto for years or you perform a file purge in your office every year, then our one-time service is right for you. Our one-time service is document destruction on demand.
Scheduled shredding is more geared toward businesses that dispose of paper records on a regular basis. We provide your company with secure containers where you can put your documents. Then FileShred comes to your location to empty and destroy the papers on a regular schedule, such as weekly or monthly.