Having a bit of a clear out / tidy, getting all my paperwork in order. Seemed to have generated about a black bag full of shredded paper, made up of (really) old bank statements, pay slips, CC & utility bills – stuff with personal details on it. The shredder cuts out every so often because it gets hot / fed up and then starts working again after about ten minutes.

Am I being a bit paranoid? Am I wasting my time? On top of everything else, our council won’t recycle shredded paper.

Have a fire instead, much more enjoyable.

Ours goes on the log burner, no chance of anyone getting details that way. I even burn the foil hats afterwards.

One of these is not true.

correct, Drac – these days it’s perfectly possible for the secret services to reconstruct a document from ashes

Good luck with that from a log burner.

I/we shred lot’s of stuff and then compost the shreddings – as effective as burning but it takes a bit longer 😀

…and no I don’t think we’re being a bit paranoid. It’s so simple to do that it’s worth the very small effort in my opinion.

I shred just about everything but luckily we have big bins at work for shredding…

On top of everything else, our council won’t recycle shredded paper.

Apparently shredded paper can’t be handed on to paper processors as its too difficult to separate out the bits of plastic envelope window.

As the paper will compost it might be worth asking your council if they’ll take it away with garden waste rather than recycling

I run a small Confidential Waste company in Manchester if that’s any use?

Andy

Thanks, but I shredded it myself and took it down the tip (two black sacks full, in the end) so at least it won’t end up in landfill – plus I’m down in Hampshire. It’s not something I do regularly – this is probably the first time in about 5 years where I’ve had a good purge with the paper work.

We did the same when getting ready to move- loads of stuff from around the time I started thinking I shouldn’t just chuck it but didn’t really know what else to do with it. I’d thought about a shredder before but it just seemed a bit OTT and paranoid, but in the end we got a small one and reckon it was worth it for £20. Took ages to get through the backlog though, it kept cutting out like the OP’s!