Shredding helps protect your information by making documents, CDs, hard drives and other storage media unusable by unauthorized viewers. But it has other advantages as well. Two of those are the benefits it provides by lowering costs and preserving the environment.

Recycling helps keep the cost of paper products lower than it otherwise might be in some cases. It’s expensive to grow and harvest new trees, prepare them and turn them into paper products. By reusing existing paper products, mixing them with new paper, the costs of producing them can be offset.

In some cases, recycling is more expensive. Sometimes, because of irrational laws and foolish business practices, mixing recycled paper products with new actually makes the total cost higher. But any good idea can be executed badly, especially when unthinking government officials are involved. In most cases, recycling makes good business sense.

Everyone also has an interest in keeping the environment pristine and being as efficient as possible. The better job we do at that, the more we gain from living in a more livable world. Recycling helps further that goal.

Recycled products reduce the need to grow and harvest new trees, which consumes land that could be used for other purposes. One of those purposes, of course, is simply leaving it as is to enjoy in its natural state.

Recycled material can also help reduce the energy consumed in making paper and paper-related products. That again supports the twin benefits of lowering costs and helping the environment. Though debates continue to rage between many about the pros and cons of environmentalism, all can agree that being more efficient about energy use is a value.

The amount of recycled material that goes into products varies. Sometimes it’s as low as a few percent, other times as high as 30% or more. In some cases it’s even the overwhelming majority of the bulk. But every little bit helps.

Shredding paper waste contributes to all those goals. Baling the shredded material together is the next stage in the process, since it provides a large quantity of paper for recycling. Commercial shredding companies often produce as much as several tons a day of baled shredded paper ready for recycling.

Just one modest-sized company produced over 7,500 tons of paper in a year that went to recycling plants. That’s equivalent to about 75,000 trees that didn’t have to be harvested. Multiply that by the many companies around who perform that service and the effect becomes huge.

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