3 Reasons You Should Outsource Your Shredding and Destruction

Achieving a productive and profitable business means analyzing the processes in your organization. One area that’s often overlooked is the shredding and destruction of confidential documents and information. In-house shredding and destruction may seem like a low-cost, risk-free task—but in reality, the opposite is true. Here are three compelling reasons to outsource the shredding and destruction of your sensitive information:

1. Cost Savings

In-house shredding is expensive. First, there’s the cost of your office shredder. The typical business purchases several shredders to meet the document disposal needs of a busy office. Second, since they’re often poorly made and the routine maintenance required for them to operate properly is often ignored, office shredders are prone to jams and other maintenance problems. As a result, most businesses have to replace the machines after just a few months. Third, because office shredders run on electricity, in-house shredding increases your energy costs.

Finally, there’s the cost of your employees’ time spent shredding. Since staples, paper clips and rubber bands can’t be shredded, they must be removed from documents. Files have to be separated into small, easily-shredded portions, and when the shredding receptacle is full, it needs to be emptied. These factors add up to wasted time, which means your employees may spend a significant amount of time shredding just a small amount of paperwork.

Outsourcing your shredding and destruction eliminates the cost and depreciation of your office paper shredders and saves your employees time. Secure collection containers are provided free of charge. These containers sit in your office and don’t require electricity. Your employees put confidential documents in the collection containers without having to remove staples, paper clips and rubber bands. When the containers are full, a background checked, drug screened, uniformed shredding professional collects the contents and shreds your document on-site at your business. When the shredding process is finished you are issued a Certificate of Destruction.

2. Customer and Employee Privacy Protection

You have a responsibility to protect your clients and staff from identity theft. Unfortunately, in-house shredding puts their information at a greater risk of being compromised because your shredded information will eventually land in a dumpster. And for an identity thief, nothing offers an easier opportunity than sensitive documents that can be reconstructed because they’re still together in one bag.

With an outsourced shredding and destruction solution, your customers’ and employees’ private information will never end up in the trash. Your documents will be shredded at your office and mixed with thousands of pounds of information from other clients, making them impossible to reconstruct. The shredded paper is then taken to a secure facility and sent to a trusted recycling partner. Outsourced shredding and destruction preserves the trust of your client and employee relationships by keeping their confidential information secure.

3. Business Brand and Reputation Integrity

Privacy breaches that compromise private information can have lasting consequences for your business, especially considering how 24-hour news channels and social media spread negative publicity like wildfire. If a privacy breach happens to your organization, your brand and business reputation may never fully recover from the damage it causes.

Outsourced shredding and destruction of confidential documents protects your business by eliminating privacy breach threats. A secure chain of custody process is maintained during the collection, shredding and recycling of your documents. And when you use a NAID AAA Certified shredding and destruction provider, security is enhanced even more. NAID AAA Certified companies receive unannounced, extensive audits of their destruction systems, equipment, facilities and staff, so you never have to doubt that your confidential information is protected throughout the final disposition process.

If you want to protect your business and its reputation for the long-term, talk to your local, established shredding and destruction service provider today.

River Mill Data Management is NAID AAA Certified and provides secure, on-site shredding and destruction services to businesses in central and South Georgia, as well as select counties in eastern Alabama. For more information, please contact us by phone or complete the form on this page.