Paper Shredder

The world is awash in paper. The technological revolution that was supposed to free the world from mountains of paper has actually helped cause those mountains to grow and expand. Something must be done with it and since burning it is against most city ordinances, paper shredders have become another office staple–along with copy machines, fax machines, and PCs.

Personal paper shredders have also become hot items in the past few years. Identity theft has been on the rise and every third piece of paper seems to have important personal or financial information on it. Unless you have a room dedicated to filing cabinets, you have to dispose of it in a way that protects you against identity thieves. Paper shredders are the easiest answer, and they take up surprisingly little space.

A good paper shredder is one that functions consistently without jamming and without leaving much that is recognizable. Vertical-cut machines (that leave papers looking like strips of linguini) leave shredded papers in a semi-reparable state. The best machines use diagonal cuts or multiple cuts to leave shredded papers in a nearly indecipherable state.

Personal paper shredders are usually quite small (some fit onto the top of wastebaskets) and can only handle a limited number of pages at a time. To shred large volumes of papers, businesses usually employ faster, higher capacity machines that can handle many papers at once. In general, it is better to spend a little more money in order to get a better machine. After all, it’s an issue of security, so this is not the place to cut corners.