destroying large quantity of paperwork?

[coppercone2]

Buy a decent shredder. Cheaping out will bite you, as you found out.

actually its a good shredder but its from a thrift store. they don't seem to age well unlike most other thrift store things

[coppercone2]

I bought this really cheap cheap OHL portable barbeque that has a lid, and the plan is/was/might still be, to wait for a really cold day with no wind,

chuck in the unclassified crap paper > aka bills, policies, receipts, outdated docs  etc etc
basically anything NLR that has our details on it,
light er up, close the lid, and instant pulp cremation 

oh yeah, and keep a pre-tested garden water hose nearby, in case Murphy come a knockin.. 

The charred remains get mixed in with crappy soil which eventually gets used as a filler (a friendly FYI + FWIW for any serial greenies here  )

it takes forever to burn and the papers fall through the grill and clog up the burner after they partially disintegrate. You need to like stir it. And it makes massive quantities of smelly smoke because of the ink. I did a big paper job a few years ago with a old BBQ and it pissed me off enough not to want to do it until now. Like, if you crumple up every paper and burn it in small amounts its OK but its time consuming. And some papers seem to like, expand outwards and get all bubbly and stuff and snuff out the rest of the flames. Its completely infuriating.

[Electro Detective]

That may be a problem, looks like I move on to Plan B: > read all the comments again 

[tooki]

Buy a decent shredder. Cheaping out will bite you, as you found out.

actually its a good shredder but its from a thrift store. they don't seem to age well unlike most other thrift store things

As chance would have it, I recently got a hand-me-down shredder from a friend.

And it wasn't happy, struggling to shred 4 sheets at a time (it's rated for 5).

6 screws later, and the problem was obvious: the gear train grease had polymerized to a tacky mess. A few spritzes of fresh lube (I didn't even remove the old grease) and it was fixed. I also went ahead and liberally oiled the shredder mechanism itself (as in, the actual cutters).

Upshot is, chances are your shredder just needs proper lubrication. People really underestimate how important this is for proper operation.

[tooki]

it takes forever to burn and the papers fall through the grill and clog up the burner after they partially disintegrate. You need to like stir it. And it makes massive quantities of smelly smoke because of the ink. I did a big paper job a few years ago with a old BBQ and it pissed me off enough not to want to do it until now. Like, if you crumple up every paper and burn it in small amounts its OK but its time consuming. And some papers seem to like, expand outwards and get all bubbly and stuff and snuff out the rest of the flames. Its completely infuriating.

Yup. Paper destruction by burning is one of those Hollywood tropes that doesn't work in reality at all. It's massively time consuming to burn any kind of quantity of paper, and in pure theory, it's not even that secure, since the inks don't burn the same, so flying ash can actually reveal information. Fine shredding is far better.

But yeah, maybe just ask your local Staples how much they'd charge for you to add your papers to their secure shredding bin.

[rsjsouza]

Get a chiminea.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimenea

I often burn papers on mine - it is great, especially on Autumn. Tied with some of the fallen dry oak leaves... It burns, baby! 

[ptricks]

Easiest method is just to check when one of those shredding companies does a local event, usually around tax season, then you just take it to them by the box and they shred it right in front of you.
https://www.shredit.com/en-us/about/shredding-events
Of course you can also pay them to shred it , usually cheap unless you have more than a few boxes.
Some UPS stores shred documents and some office supply places.

Anything else is going to be labor intensive and either use toxic chemicals or produce waste you still have to dispose .

[tszaboo]

It used to be the fashion to soak and mash paper then use a small press to form fire-bricks out of it, one of my grandparents had one back in the 80s.

It is the typical ignorance of the old generation. About 1/4th of generated waste is paper, and burning it releases huge amount of pollution into the air. It is not "just wood", it is toxic metal, carcinogenic materials, glues, bisphenol, etc.

Shred it and place it into the recycle bin.

[Gyro]

Get a chiminea.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimenea

I often burn papers on mine - it is great, especially on Autumn. Tied with some of the fallen dry oak leaves... It burns, baby! 

That makes two of us then ( https://www.eevblog.com/forum/reviews/destroying-large-quantity-of-paperwork/msg2491443/#msg2491443 ). Clearly a winner! 

[rsjsouza]

Get a chiminea.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimenea

I often burn papers on mine - it is great, especially on Autumn. Tied with some of the fallen dry oak leaves... It burns, baby! 

That makes two of us then ( https://www.eevblog.com/forum/reviews/destroying-large-quantity-of-paperwork/msg2491443/#msg2491443 ). Clearly a winner! 

I didn't see your post. That is the way to go!

[Electro Detective]

It used to be the fashion to soak and mash paper then use a small press to form fire-bricks out of it, one of my grandparents had one back in the 80s.

It is the typical ignorance of the old generation. About 1/4th of generated waste is paper, and burning it releases huge amount of pollution into the air. It is not "just wood", it is toxic metal, carcinogenic materials, glues, bisphenol, etc.


Shred it and place it into the recycle bin.

Contempt from  the alleged typical ignorance of the old generation aside   
what you comment is all good, green and logical 

but exactly what do the 'recyclers' do from there? 

i.e. aren't urban battlers and ricketty old genners better off making some half baked use of the fire/energy potential of paper waste,
rather than trusting the local authorities landfillers flogging another 'recycle' 'scheme', in order to do a simple job properly,
which I would not bet on that they can ? 

[tszaboo]

Contempt from  the alleged typical ignorance of the old generation aside   
what you comment is all good, green and logical 

but exactly what do the 'recyclers' do from there? 

i.e. aren't urban battlers and ricketty old genners better off making some half baked use of the fire/energy potential of paper waste,
rather than trusting the local authorities landfillers flogging another 'recycle' 'scheme', in order to do a simple job properly,
which I would not bet on that they can ? 

It typically gets turned into cardboard, or paper again. AFAIK, making paper from recycled paper is less energy than wood, so they have a financial incentive to do it. And probably worth noting that 50% of the mass of wood cannot be used for paper production, so each KG of recycled paper saves twice as much wood. AFAIK EU recycles something like 3/4 of it's total paper production.

[EEVblog]

Hire a tree shredder from the hardware store?

[tooki]

It used to be the fashion to soak and mash paper then use a small press to form fire-bricks out of it, one of my grandparents had one back in the 80s.

It is the typical ignorance of the old generation. About 1/4th of generated waste is paper, and burning it releases huge amount of pollution into the air. It is not "just wood", it is toxic metal, carcinogenic materials, glues, bisphenol, etc.


Shred it and place it into the recycle bin.

Contempt from  the alleged typical ignorance of the old generation aside   
what you comment is all good, green and logical 

but exactly what do the 'recyclers' do from there? 

i.e. aren't urban battlers and ricketty old genners better off making some half baked use of the fire/energy potential of paper waste,
rather than trusting the local authorities landfillers flogging another 'recycle' 'scheme', in order to do a simple job properly,
which I would not bet on that they can ? 

Plastic, and to a much smaller extent glass, are the materials where recycling is problematic, and where the whole world was shipping it to China instead of dealing with it locally. (I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Switzerland is a notable exception: the recycling rate for PET beverage bottles is above 80%, and of that, 93% is recycled domestically, with the balance going to Germany.)

But other things, like metals, were being recycled long before recycling became a “thing”. Something upwards of 90% of all steel is recycled. With lead it’s even higher (since the vast majority of lead used is for car batteries, which almost always get swapped out, not purchased as spares, so it’s easy to collect the old ones and single-stream their processing). Paper came later, but it’s so useful that it’s widely done.

There’s no evidence that paper recycling is subject to any of the problems of plastic recycling, or at least not on anything approaching that scale.

[David Hess]

US cities have started dropping mandatory recycling with the separate bins.  One reason is that the restrictions on what may be placed into the bins have reached the point where compliance is poor.

[KaneTW]

On the other hand, Japan has very strict restrictions on what can be placed where and has excellent compliance.

[David Hess]

On the other hand, Japan has very strict restrictions on what can be placed where and has excellent compliance.

The compliance problem is because the rules are incomprehensible.

[tooki]

On the other hand, Japan has very strict restrictions on what can be placed where and has excellent compliance.

The compliance problem is because the rules are incomprehensible.

No, not at all. Americans are just lazy. (I'm American, but have lived in USA and in Switzerland, a place with high recycling compliance.)

I recently saw a program about a Japanese town that requires its residents to separate recyclables into almost 50 different categories. Americans can't even be bothered to separate paper, glass, plastic, and metal.

It's purely cultural, nothing more.

[David Hess]

The compliance problem is because the rules are incomprehensible.

No, not at all. Americans are just lazy. (I'm American, but have lived in USA and in Switzerland, a place with high recycling compliance.)

No, not at all.  American politicians are just idiots, or bought and paid for.

We faced this issue where I live a couple months ago when the city issued new, resized and expanded guidelines, that nobody can apply because they are mutually contradictory.  (1) The list of rules is now so long that it no longer fits on the recycle bin.

To put it another way, distributing the sorting load to everybody such that they waste their time is not a solution.  The sorting must be made *easier* and not more difficult.  If this cannot be done, then the economics of the whole scheme are questionable which coincidentally is exactly what they are finding causing smarter cities to drop it.

(1) This is after doing the same thing earlier.  Obviously if it did not work earlier, the solution is to do it again, and again.

[ebastler]

We faced this issue where I live a couple months ago when the city issued new, resized and expanded guidelines, that nobody can apply because they are mutually contradictory.  (1) The list of rules is now so long that it no longer fits on the recycle bin.

Would you have a link to those guidelines? That would help readers from countries with established recycling systems to compare the approaches.

Edit: To add some European perspective, here's a summary of the recycling pathways in Hamburg, Germany:
https://www.hamburg.com/welcome/living/housing/11841466/waste-recycling/
There's more detail behind that, but I could only find that information in German.

[Electro Detective]

Maybe if the govermints educated the population properly to begin with at school on what recycling is and how it works and why it's important, 

showed how it's done on TV commercials during sports games (captive audience  )

and local councils inspected bins at random for compliancy (with letterbox good/bad feedback notices) as they have started to do here,

and or cameras in the pickup trucks,
 
and or offered incentives for residents and industry, like discounts on their rates etc 

there would be no feeble excuses and buck passing 


Most people I know are absolutely clueless about what goes in what bin,
I've seen 'intelligent' people place rubbish in their rubbish bin (DUH..) AND same in their recycle bin and garden waste bin 
 
Come on let's be real, no one is going to wade through that stinking messy mixed up crap to sort it out for 'recycling',
the entire recycle truck load is knackered, it's landfill bound now, problem sorted, end of story

and don't get me started on the stupid bin and bin lid color schemes, and color updates for even more confusion between the old style bins and new,
that make no sense or logic, even to compliant recycle sorters like me.

The pickup truck people must go nuts, sporting facepalm crease marks from every second bin/house stop

Seriously, I used to believe most people were either ignorant or apathetic (hey, nothing new there LOL)
but the reality is that in this situation, they just don't know enough about it to care,

much less make an effort to play the '3 Bin Shell Game'   

FWIW children get it immediately, and very good and particular at it too,
they see it as a cool 'using your brain' game, not a 'hassle' chore 

[ebastler]

Seriously, I used to believe most people were either ignorant or apathetic (hey, nothing new there LOL)
but the reality is that in this situation, they just don't know enough about it to care,

FWIW children get it immediately, and very good and particular at it too,

So how is that different from tooki's "just lazy" hypothesis? 

I would have the same request to you as I have to David Hess: Could you post a link to those incomprehensible, unreasonable guidelines in your country? It would be good to compare and see whether the requirements are really that much more complex than in Europe, or people are just less willing to bother.

[Macbeth]

Paper is mostly cellulose, and often very boring. Douse it in an appropriate mix of sulphuric and nitric acid to recycle it into nitrocellulose which can be a lot more fun. 

[bsfeechannel]

nah I am just lazy its like 3 grocery bags worth

I had to get rid of a lot of paper once. I tried everything. I burned it, shredded it with a paper shredder that kept clogging every half an hour, and even soaked it in water to shred it with a blender.

My takeaway is that shredding paper requires patience. Unless you have some industrial machine to do the job like Dave suggested: a tree shredder (Why didn't I think of that?).

[coppercone2]

because you need to rent it, tow it, pay out the ass, etc