For big offices that produce large volumes of sensitive paperwork, disposal of unwanted documents presents unique challenges.

If you’re a law firm, a bank, an insurance company, estate agent, recruitment specialist or similar, you will likely routinely be handling paper documents that contain sensitive financial, contractual and personal information. Because of the risks of such data falling into the wrong hands - and the strict regulations governing data protection these days - you cannot simply throw such paperwork out with the recycling when it is no longer needed.

The same applies to the in-house finance, legal, HR and other departments of any large organisation. Storing endless volumes of documents in the interests of keeping the data they contain safe is impractical. Yet disposal must involve rendering the documents unreadable - in effect, destroying them to hide whatever it is they contain.

The standard solution is to shred paperwork before it is thrown out. But for organisations and offices that are churning over high quantities of documentation, what’s the best way to go about this?

1. Heavy duty shredders vs shredding services

If your office is producing bin bag loads of paperwork that needs shredding every week, a common solution is to employ a third-party shredding service to come in, take it away and do what needs to be done.

The benefits of employing a shredding service are that they can take very large amounts of paperwork all in one go, it means no one in your team is going to have to spend time doing the actual shredding, and you also don’t then have to think about getting rid of the shredded paper, which there is obviously going to be a lot of.

However, some drawbacks of shredding services include the fact that they might only be able to do a collection, say, once a week, which means you have to think about secure storage in the meantime. And shredding services also come at a cost, of course. Every month or quarter, whatever your payment schedule.

What many organisations with the biggest shredding needs often assume is that shredding services will work out cheaper and more efficient than using their own shredders. If you’ve only had experience with standard manual paper shredders in the past, this is a fair assumption to make. Trying to work your way through a huge pile of documents will bring up nightmare images of toiling away at the machine for hours on end, disgruntled colleagues waiting their turn or increased opportunity for regular jams.

But nowadays the choice of office shredders available isn’t restricted to hand-feed models designed just to take a handful of sheets at a time. Heavy duty commercial models are built to handle large volumes of paper quickly, efficiently and without risk of damage through overuse. What is more, they are available with automated feeds and large bin capacities so someone doesn’t have to stand feeding sheets into the machine by hand, and it can work its way through large piles of paperwork before it needs to be emptied.

2. Automatic Paper Shredders

For high capacity shredding in the workplace, the best options available are large automatic models like the Leitz IQ Autofeed Office Pro 600.

Automated feed is a game-changer when it comes to dealing with very large volumes of paperwork. These models feature an in-tray like the kind you’ll be familiar with on a printer or a photocopier where you load all the documents you want to shred. Once the in-tray is full, you close the door and hit go - and the shredder takes care of the rest for you, feeding all the sheets through the shredder automatically.

The Office Pro 600 models have a load capacity of up to 600 sheets at a time. With a manual feed shredder, even one with a relatively large feed capacity that can take 20 sheets at a time, shredding 600 sheets would mean standing there and reloading it 30 times. Thanks to the auto feed, you can walk away and get on with something else.

With a 110-litre bin capacity, the Office Pro 600 shredder can also hold well over 1000 shredded sheets at a time before they need to be emptied. It features an infra-red full bin sensor that provides a warning when the bin is 80% full, avoiding the risk of the bin overfilling.

The final thing to recommend the Leitz Automatic models for even the most high-capacity requirements is how tough and resilient they are. Because of the large amount of friction caused when rotating shredding blades are in use, many shredders have only very short run times, otherwise you risk burning the motor out. This puts a further restriction on how much shredding you can get done, because you have to leave the machine unused for a period of time to cool off again.

Utilising heavy duty motors, Leitz Automatic shredders can run continuously for up to two hours, ample time to shred a full load and more. In addition, its toughened teeth will shred through staples and paperclips, so you don’t have to take whole documents apart before you put the sheets in the feed tray. And with special anti-jam technology which automatically stops and reverses shredding the moment a problem is detected, you don’t have to constantly monitor every job for faults.

Efficient, practical and robust, heavy duty automatic shredders like the Leitz IQ Office Pro 600 provide organisations with the biggest shredding requirements with an alternative to shredding services. By shredding documents ‘on the go’ as and when required, you don’t have to worry about secure storage in between pick-ups. And with the volumes they are capable of shredding, their high level of reliability and low operating costs, Automatic shredder offer a total cost of ownership that is competitive compared to any collection service. In fact, it will likely pay back in a matter of months.
Automatic shredders are available in smaller compact sizes as well, this is ideal for staff working more often from home than in the office.