Keeping Your Workplace Green with Shred-it

Shred-it’s secure recycling process helps to save thousands of trees every year – as well as reducing carbon emissions and water and other natural resource usage.

Sustainability is firmly on the national agenda and the public is increasingly looking to organisations to help tackle major environmental issues. One way the UK is standing up and taking responsibility is via green initiatives such as Tree Week, where businesses are encouraged to change their recycling behaviours.

Every person in the UK consumes the equivalent of 4.48 trees per year for the purpose of paper alone. The average office worker uses 10,000 sheets of paper each year. 68% of those 10,000 sheets are wasted (1).

Office paper recycling is one of the easiest and most common ways a workplace can help protect the environment and do their bit. But with the risk of security breaches at an all-time high, it’s important workplaces prioritise paper-based data security, while still committing to green office initiatives.

Here’s how Shred-it’s secure recycling process helps to keep your workplace green, at the same time as keeping your confidential information, confidential.

Typically, many documents are disposed of in recycling bins – greatly increasing the risk of a security breach as they can be easily seen and stolen. Replacing recycling bins with locked consoles ensures documents can’t be retrieved once inside.

A Shred-it All policy is recommended for your workplace. Research shows that more than a quarter of information breaches are caused by employee negligence or error.  By making the decision to shred all documents that are no longer needed, employees don’t have to decide what is or isn’t confidential – at the same time as increasing the volume of documents that are securely recycled.

Secure consoles are regularly emptied by trained and security-vetted staff, before documents are securely destroyed using proprietary cross-cut shredder technology. The entire process is tracked via a handheld scanning device and you will be emailed a Certificate of Destruction.

Once documents have been destroyed, Shred-it bales all shredded paper and sends it to a paper mill where it is pulped – with impurities and printing ink removed – which is then used to create new paper products.

Customers on our Regularly Scheduled Paper Shredding and Document Destruction Services can also be provided with an Environmental Certificate every year – so you can see just how many trees your organisation has saved.


(1) https://www.conserve-energy-future.com/real-figures-paper-usage-uk.php