Benefits of Shredding

Did you know that every Texas business is required to develop retention and disposal procedures? Under provisions of Chapter 35 of the Business and Commerce Code, businesses are required to develop document retention and document disposal procedures to protect their client’s personal and private information. The reason for these laws is very clear, they are to protect millions of Texans from falling victim to identity theft.

The period of time that business records are stored should be determined by a retention schedule that takes into consideration operational value, legal value, fiscal value and historical value. No document should be kept longer than this retention period. By not adhering to a program of routinely destroying stored records, a company exhibits suspicious disposal practices that could be negatively construed in the event of litigation or audit. Keeping documents past their necessary life cycle leaves them vulnerable to theft, discovery, and increased storage costs. It is stated in the Federal Rule Twenty-Six that in a lawsuit, both parties must provide all relevant information to the counsel of the opposition within 85 days of the defendant's initial response. Not fulfilling this requirement may cause further findings against them. If a business has a set schedule for document destruction, it will make things much easier if the need arises to search through all documents for specifically dated information. It is highly recommended to record the dates on which data is destroyed as a safeguard.

On-Site Shred offers the following guidelines but emphasizes that after you develop your policy, it should be reviewed and signed off by your Certified Public Accountant and your company Attorney.

Outsourcing your document shredding will save you money. Many businesses wonder if they can afford to outsource their document shredding. The real question is “Can you afford not to?” If you take the time to answer the following questions, you will be surprised at how much in-house paper shredding actually costs.

Equipment Costs:

• 1. Average costs of shredding machine(s) ______________
• 2. Number of shredding machines in office ______________
• 3. Times shredding machines are replaced during year ______________
• Total cost of paper shredding machines ((1 X 2) x 3) ______________

Employee Costs

• 1. Total number of employees ______________
• 2. Minutes a day an employee spends sorting ______________
• 3. Minutes spent hovering over the shredding machine ______________
• 4. Minutes per day clearing paper jams ______________
• 5. Minutes per day disposing and cleaning up paper ______________
• ( 1 X (2+3+4+5))/60 = Employee time ______________
• 6. Average employee salary (include taxes & benefits) ______________
• (Employee time X Avg Employee salary) x 265 (working days) ______________
• Waste disposal services cost ______________
• Texas AG fines for improper disposal ______________
• Total costs for in-house paper shredding ______________

Compare your final calculation with our pricing section and you will be very surprised at the amount of money you will save by outsourcing your paper shredding! You may ask yourself why we charge so little for our services? The answer is simple; we are very efficient in what we do. Our document shredding trucks are able to process 5000 pounds of paper an hour, which means we are able to serve more customers in a given day and we pass that efficiency savings on to you!

In Summary, outsourcing your paper shredding needs will benefit you by;

• Saving employee time from document shredding
• Saving employee cost from paper shredding
• Saving equipment expense from document shredding
• Saving equipment maintenance costs from paper shredding
• Saving from waste disposal fees
• Reduces your risk from improperly discarded documents
• Reduces your risk of discovery
• Reduces your document storage costs
• Become an active business in protecting the environment.