Top 10 Reasons Why Paper Shredding Is Important
Paper shredding has existed for hundreds of years and began as a basic manual tearing of paper using our hands. Today, it has evolved to the use of complex shredding machines especially in the corporate world where the use of paper is quite high. There are many reasons why individuals and businesses employ the use of paper shredders. Here are the top 10 reasons:
1. Privacy
Papers contain sensitive information, from financial statements, bills, marketing plans, and many other documents that contain confidential information. After cleaning long clean up days, a majority of these documents are bound to find themselves in trashcans. To ensure that the information contained in these documents does not breach the company’s or individual privacy, shredding is required. This also protects the reputation of organisations by damaging incriminating information.
2. Compliance with the Law
There are laws set to penalize organisations that discard their papers carelessly, especially those with personal confidential information. Such corporations are required by the law to protect the privacy of people’s personal information, failure to which they stand to face legal and financial implications. To avoid this, when discarding documents, papers should be shred to completely damage them, thereby protecting employees and clients personal information.
3. In support of the Green Movement
Unfortunately, papers are made from trees, and more paper means more trees have to be cut down. As of today, technology is yet to invent a replacement for trees as raw materials in papermaking. To minimize deforestation, the green movement has advocated for various tree saving strategies, one being paper shredding for businesses. When people shred their paper, the pieces are then collected and recycled to make more paper. This way, fewer trees are cut, protecting mother nature.
4. To Prevent Identity theft
Nowadays, crime has risen to unprecedented levels. Cybercrimes are particularly easier thanks to identity theft. A simple thing such as a delivery box that has a name and address could lead to serious implications under the law, simply because the recipient’s identity was stolen and used to commit criminal activity. To avoid this kind of fraud, individuals should shred all their documents, as well as organisations.
5. Keep the Workspace clean
We cannot control the amount of paper we use, especially in the workplace. Tearing a paper from a notebook to write down a to-do-list, a note to a colleague, make a quick calculation, and even write down something quickly. Second are the innumerable transactions that leave us with receipts, forms, letters, notices, and so many more documents. Since most of these are used to relay information, they are useless once we read the information therein. With a shredder, the workspace can be kept free of such papers, therefore kept free of clutter and useless papers that occupy space.
6. Eliminating Fire Hazards
Imagine the piles and piles of paper that lie around desks in the workspace, or in a study at home. In case either of the employees or yourself, decide to smoke and accidentally happen to leave a lit cigar on a desk, the papers increase the risk of fire. With a shredding machine, employees can easily dispose and destroy paper documents that are expendable, reducing this risk.
7. Save on time
Traditional manual cutting of papers couldn’t come close to shredding requirements in today’s world. If this was the case, there would have to be workdays set aside for paper cutting, but thanks to paper shredders, this is not the case. Paper cuts are also quite prevalent in manual cutting, yet are unsanitary and uncomfortable, but shredding does away with these. It is a safe, fast, and convenient way of ripping documents.
8. Save on storage space
People are known to be hoarders of a lot of things, papers included. This is even more so for companies that hold on to documents that are tens of years old, and have no value to the company. While sometimes this is mistaken as record keeping, most times it comes from laziness and lack of a proper way to discard the innumerable documents contained in the organisation. To free up the filing cabinets, desks, and many other storage spaces, such documents should be shredded.
9. Consumer Trust
Most industries, especially the education, health, and legal industries have sensitive personal information. Companies that engage in document shredding and other privacy techniques gain consumer confidence, which increases the consumers trust. When clients know that documents are not left lying carelessly around, but are shred when need be, they feel secure that their privacy is respected.
10. Employee Satisfaction
The management and human resource departments have innumerable confidential documents belonging to employees. From disciplinary information, salary scales, redundancy details, wage reviews, and many others, the list can be quite long. If either of these got out, they could potentially cause havoc and suspicion in the workplace. To keep employees safe from such havoc, and to ensure that they feel confident in the things they keep private, shredding is important.
That said, the value of paper shredding goes over and above simple paper management. For these and many other reasons, all companies and individuals should employ paper shredding to discard and destroy their documents.