Let’s get real, most of us have a bunch (or three) of old bills, tax returns, and miscellaneous paperwork hiding somewhere in our homes. But the fact is, shredding those documents is not just about cleaning. As, shredding is a powerful way of safeguarding your emotional health, your hygiene, and even your personal information and community. Here are the seven most important reasons and ways to shred your documents, as a part of your regular routine at your work as well at home.
1. Stopping Identity Theft
Identity theft ranks tops and as one of the country’s fastest-growing crimes and it can further results in devastating your financial and emotional stability. Shredding personal documents, as Westchester County officials say, is a first line defense against your personal and sensitive information from landing in the wrong hands. Pre-approved credit card offers, old tax returns, and expired credit card statements are treasure for crooks and digital identify thieves if it go as it is in your trash bin. Shredding these important personal papers prior to disposal is easy and effective way of safeguarding your identity and personal information.
2. Safeguarding Your Privacy Beyond the Obvious
Everyone is familiar with shredding bank statements and tax returns, but there are many other documents that can place you in danger. As Time Shred Services points out, things including junk mail, unused licenses, and even old receipts, additional credit and debit cards and bank statements may carry enough personal data which is vulnerable in the hands of digital thieves. :Don’t ever forget about these commonly neglected documents and items if it contains your name, address, social security number, health information or any bank account information, it’s better to shred than to regret after loss.”
3. Enforcing Mental Well-being Through Peace of Mind
There is a satisfaction in seeing your sensitive and unusable documents shredded like trash is a also a very important reasons to shred your documents in safer way. Having assurance that your confidential data is destroyed helps to reduce your worry of possible data leaks or identity theft. A lot of individuals discover that scheduling shredding on a regular basis leaves them feeling more relax about their personal data, and this can ease stress and reinforce general mental well-being.
4. Getting the Best Out of Free Community Shredding Events
Communities and offices throughout the New York city and other major cities have adopted free shredding facilities as a means for workers and residents to safeguard their information. Local governments, libraries, and even banks have such facilities, which providing on-site destruction of individual documents usually with a limit of three or four boxes per household per month. You don’t have to preregister for such community shredding facility events, but it’s a good idea to get there early because they’re first come, first served and may be, it queued up very quickly. Just be sure to take off big binder clips and hard covers, and keep your documents loose in boxes after removing paper ties and staplers, so that they can be easily shredded.
5. Safe at Public Shredding Events
Safety and security are the highest priority during shredding events. Employees are trained to go through and prepare the materials prior to putting them inside shredding machine to prevent anything hazardous or unsuitable items from making it difficult, such as oversize paper bunches, cardboard like papers, or electronics records, Most of such events provide you services such as their event volunteers or organizers employees to unload your documents, and ensuring the process is safe and fast. If you are concerned about confidentiality, then many such events also provides industrial mobile shredders at your home, that can shred your documents on site so that you can see your information to destroy under your supervision.
6. Increasing Environmental Health Through Recycling
Shredding is not only benefit to secure your personal information, but it is also beneficial to promote recycling and safeguarding our earth from stopping excess tree cutting due to usage of recycled paper. Westchester County have promoted that their shredding initiatives with recycled a number of hundreds of tons of paper, by keeping it away from the landfill and helping to sustain a natural recycling procedure. Shredded paper is reused into [products such as 2nd grade paper, toilet paper and packaging materials, saving trees and conserving water. Every ton of recycled paper preserves 17 trees and 7,000 gallons of water, so your shredding habit is a small but an impactful act of environmental responsibility, and is also a one of the very important reasons to responsibly to shred your important but un-useful documents regularly.
7. Year-Round Solutions for Document Disposal
Missed the big event? No need to worry there are plenty of solutions to shred off your personal documents including having a personal shredding machine at home. Several office supply stores such as Staples and UPS provide secure shredding services at a low cost, and community recycling centers also takes documents to shred and safe disposal and recycling of papers. For companies or individuals with large volumes of paper, professional shredding firms offer drop-off or on-site shredding services, and issues certificates of destruction of your documents to keep the records for your information. Just be sure to select a provider with better safety credentials, such as NAID AAA certification, for peace of mind during disposal of your personal documents and important papers.
Shredding your documents isn’t just a chore it’s a smart, healthy and environment friendly habit that protects your identity and personal information from circulating to wrong people and also helps to preserve nature with recycling and waste reduction. It supports your mental well-being with peace, and helps your community health and nature initiatives. We hope now you are aware about the important reasons and ways to shred your personal documents with safety. So, next time when you’re going to toss any old bill in the trash, remember: a little shredding goes a long way.