What happens to your shredded office waste?

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Have you ever wondered what really does happen to those bags of shredded waste that gets taken out of your office on a daily basis? Many who do not know, and that may include even you, more than likely, believe that that is all going to be recycled. But nothing could be further from the truth.

No longer do those bags of “confidential” waste that have gone through the shredder, nowadays contain only shredded paper. Nay, they also contain shredded credit cards, ID cards, CDs, DVDs, etc., and that all in the same bag.

This means that the contents of such bags, in fact, no longer be recycled in any way, shape or form and it all ends up in some incinerator or – wait for it – a “secure” landfill. However secure it may be it is still a landfill, a hole in the ground.

When it was just shredded papers that were in those bags recycling was no problem, despite the security thing, and new paper products were made from the pulp created with that and other paper.

Today this is not possible, though to some degree it would be but it would be somewhat costly, probably, to separate the plastic waste from the true paper waste and therefore all of it goes to be either burned or dumped in the ground.

If we really want to be “green” in business then we have to rethink the way we deal with this kind of waste and that would mean to shred paper separately to plastics. That way both can be recycled rather than buried in holes in the ground together or burned.

© 2014