Disposing of Old Documents

Hi All,

Has anyone used a shredding company or a similar service locally to get rid of old documents/bank statements etc?

Cheers

Assuming you have a garden, can’t you just sling it all on a bonfire?

Lewisham’s rubbish gets burned. You could shred first. Added deterrent if you have a cat - add some used litter to the bag.

Lewisham is a smoke control area, so you might want to think twice before slinging it on a bonfire:

https://www.lewisham.gov.uk/myservices/environment/air-pollution/Pages/bonfires.aspx

Also I found from experience that trying to burn more than a few sheets of paper can be messy and difficult to ensure every bit gets burnt and nothing blows away or is missed. Office paper produces a surprising amount of ash too.

I have a small office shredder, then bag and bin the waste, though note shredding litter can’t be placed in the green bin. This sounds like there’s enough stuff that needs disposing that finding a good company is the right approach in my humble opinion.

It’s Bonfire Night soon. Get in while the going’s good.

That was the case, but things seem to have moved on and you can now put shredded office paper in the green bin.

https://www.lewisham.gov.uk/myservices/wasterecycle/recycling/Pages/What-can-i-put-in-my-recycling-bin.aspx

in a flat sadly, but there’s an idea. maybe i can pop down to a bonfire. Not sure it’s strictly legal

@ForestHull it’s documents going back years, some from 2012. It’s all useless to me but you could put together a pretty complete profile from it I would imagine

The other thing is I don’t have a bin, I’m in the daily bag collection zone so a bit nervous of slinging it onto the street

Is there a skip nearby? I can see students or squatters rifling through skips for furniture and whatnot but I doubt identity thieves would be interested.

All the confidential document collection & destruction services I have experienced are priced at the mid to large-sized businesses.

It would be cheapest to get a shredder off Amazon and you could probably be done in a cup of tea’s time, but then you are left with a shredder to store in your flat unfortunately.

I bought one of these from Amazon ages ago for a similar reason https://amzn.to/2PoIUO5
I will say it takes a lot longer to shred paper on mass than I thought it would!!
Maybe ask your friends if any of their workplaces use a commercial shredding service and see if you can bundle in your stuff for either free or pay towards it.

Otherwise take it all to the Lewisham tip and dump it there rather than leaving it on the street for collection.

I agree. The cross-cut shredder I have at home is reasonably priced, but takes only about 2-3 sheets at a time at and takes about 20 seconds for them to go through. So that’s about 8 sheets a minute if you can keep feeding it flat pages. Receipts and other fiddly things take much longer to arrange and feed in too.

I’ve taken things into work where there is a really big shredder which eats phone book sized chunks of paper and is much faster. Small bits of paper like receipts and circulars are still a nuisance though.

I have used Datashred in Greenwich a couple of times now. It has cost me £30 to reverse a van into their unit and unload as much as I have in the van. While it’s never been anything approaching a van full it seems a reasonable price and you get a formal certificate of destruction which is good. Also (at least last time I went) that £30 allows you to get rid of any laptops etc, albeit at a different location in Greenwich.

The curious thing is that you don’t pay at the time. They take your stuff and then get your details so they can send you an invoice in the post. Followed by the certificate. All a bit old school.

I think they also do collection services but a quick trip to Greenwich has always suited me better.

I’ve done just that at Datashred in the past. However, the Datshred operation has been moved to Crayford. They also ask for payment in advance. I’ve just had some stuff taken away by archive.co.uk for £60. If you google something like ‘confidential wast disposal south London’ several companies come up. Some offer a self delivery option, some don’t.

cheers all, might try visiting the dump direct!