Shredders

Paper shredders make work easier for everyone. Whether you’re a teacher or a businessman, getting rid of documents with the shredder is always the easiest. These mechanical devices turn paper into long, thin strips or fine particles.

Many government organizations use heavy duty paper shredder to quickly destroy confidential and sensitive documents.

Paper shredders come in a variety of cut styles. Thus, choosing one according to your needs can often get confusing. So, if you’re looking for the best paper shredder for your personal or professional use, we have included all the best ones in our “Shredders” category.

What Are Different Shredder Cut Styles?

You need to learn about different cut styles to choose the right shredder. Here are some most-commonly used shredder cut styles: 

·         Strip-Cut: If you’re a beginner and just want a shredder for daily use, the strip-cut is the best way to start with. It is a basic cut style that creates strips, neither too thin nor too thick. You can think of these strips as “spaghetti.” The shredder with a strip-cut style isn’t preferred for sensitive documents. Typically, it will give you around 40 shreds per page. 

·         Cross-Cut: Cross-cut shredders are a level ahead of the basic strip-cut. These come with two blade sets that shred paper widthwise as well as lengthwise. This means your document will reduce into relatively smaller pieces since it is cut horizontally and vertically. If you don’t want to yield long strips, you can go for cross-cut shredders. These are perfect for every day reports and paperwork. Cross-cut shredders cut down 200 shreds per page.

·         Super Cross-Cut: The shredders with super cross-cut style are perfect for cutting sensitive papers and documents. You can use it to shred documents containing your personal information or business-related data. Super cross-cut shredders generate even more refined shredded pieces as compared to cross-cut, giving around 400 shreds per page.

·         Micro-Cut: A micro cut shredder is specifically designed to shred super-confidential and sensitive business documents containing financial information or future strategies. If you own a business, especially in the legal, healthcare, or accounting industry, a micro-cut shredder is the best option for you. This shredder cuts paper into even smaller pieces with around 2,000 shreds per page.

·         High Security: The high-security cut-style shredder transforms documents into dust. These particles are so minute that there is no way anyone can reassemble them. High-security cut style is a standard for military and governmental organizations.

Benefits of Using a Paper Shredder

If you can burn the paper to get rid of its sensitive content, why bother buying a paper shredder? Do you often wonder the same? Here is why purchasing a paper shredder is the best investment you can make.

·         Data Protection: As a business owner, you know how important it is to protect your customer’s data from cybercriminals. A single paper can expose confidential customer information to hackers, leaving your company with a bad market reputation and a heavy financial loss. For this reason, it’s best to rely on an office depot paper shredder to reduce these documents into tiny bits that no one can reorganize again. So, you can ensure your customer’s data protection along with your security with a paper shredder. 

·         Minimizes Safety Concerns: When you don’t get rid of old documents, they pile up in your cabinets to the top. Of course, you don’t have any other place to store, but why do you even have to do that in the first place? Doing so takes up extra floor space and poses safety hazards to the employees trying to make their way through these cabinets. They might bump into these big cupboards and get injured. Shredding paper as soon as they become useless is the best way to reduce safety concerns at your home and workplace.

·         Enhanced Human Productivity: Handing over the paper shredding task to machines brings comfort to humans. Without the shredder, you’ll be cutting down every document separately. This tends to waste a lot of your precious time and may affect your productivity over time. Thus, buying the best shredder for your working premises can help you focus more on important tasks since you won’t be shredding documents one by one. 

·         Promotes Recycling: The environment is the biggest concern these days. A paper shredder reduces a full sheet of paper into minute particles, usually sorted and recycled by a reliable recycling company. If you’re a business owner, you should know that customers tend to shop more from brands that promote recycling. In case you don’t know, you can save about 17 trees and a landfill area of 3.3 cubic yards by recycling one ton of paper.

·         Builds Customer Trust: Businesses that use heavy duty paper shredder or hire a shredding service to gather customers’ attention and sympathy more. The customer knows that even if they provide their personal information to you, it will be destroyed over time. When your hired shredding company completes the destruction process for you, it issues a Certificate of Destruction. You can use it to confirm that the document was destroyed legally. 

·         Strengthens Document Security: When you leave your important documents for the trash pickup, you can never know what they will do with them. You cannot even monitor the destruction process of your documents. For workplaces, the risks are even bigger. Suppose you leave confidential documents on your office desk believing that they will be disposed of later. Instead, it gets in the hands of an external person. You can’t imagine what could happen! Thus, shredding via an office depot paper shredder can prevent such situations from happening in the first place. You’ll rest assured that you’ve destroyed the documents with your own hands. 

·         Quicker and Easier: Since paper shredders come in various cut styles, they have different levels of efficiency. So, you can shred only one paper or several pounds of documents, depending on the cut level of your shredder. For businesses, micro-cut shredders are perfect. 

How to Choose the Best Paper Shredder?

After choosing the right cut style, don’t just go to the market and buy a paper shredder. You need to consider a few things before bringing one to your home or office.

Here are some factors to consider to buying the best shredder:

·         Document Size: First, you need to determine your most-used paper size. For instance, if you often use letter-sized sheets, you need to find a shredder that works best on this paper size. Similarly, if you work in an accounting firm, you may come across payslips or different-sized documents, particularly super-wide square sheets. Of course, you can fold such documents and then shred them off. But it could be pretty hectic to destroy them with the same shredder when you get a load of them. So, by assessing the paper size you’ll have to shred, you can get the right shredder.

 ·         Load Size: The next thing to consider is the load size. If you’ll be shredding smaller heaps of papers, a basic strip-cut shredder would simply do the work for you. On the other hand, if you have to shred tons of paper in a day, you need to buy an upgraded one. So, determine your estimated load size and buy a shredder accordingly.

·      Speed: The shredder is all about convenience and ease. You can save your time, effort, and money by bringing an efficient shredder to your home and office. However, the biggest role is played by speed. Old-fashioned paper shredders typically don’t have fast speeds. On top of that, they have a specified runtime, so they can constantly run for up to a particular time before draining. Once drained, they require some time to cool down and return to their operational situation.

·         Safety Measures: If you’re buying a paper shredder for your home, you need to be cautious as minimal security can lead to severe health concerns. Luckily, many paper shredders now come with laser sensors that detect fingers when they touch the machine. So, you can look for those if you have little kids roaming around in your house.

·       Energy Saving: Paper shredder takes a lot of power to operate fully and smoothly. So if you’re getting the shredder for your personal use, you need to evaluate how much power you’re willing to use. Fortunately, you can now find power-saving paper shredders. So get one if you want to reduce your energy bill.

·       Noise Levels: Besides several benefits, paper shredders can be pretty noisy, and it’s understandable. They are machines equipped with several moving parts working together to slice papers into smaller particles. Even if you get an expensive paper shredder, you can’t avoid the noise. So, if you don’t want a loud machine, you need to prioritize this factor while buying one. Find noise-controlled units that promote silent operations.

Paper shredders are a valuable addition to your workplace and home for enhanced productivity. They ensure the full-proof security of your confidential information and reduce waste. So, go through Lenovo’s Shredders collection now and find the one according to your needs! So, find a modern paper shredder that suits your operational requirements.