Did you know that Americans throw out four million tons of office paper annually? When you pile up four million tons of paper, you can build a 12 foot tall paper stack that spans from the West Coast to the East Coast. For each ton of paper that a business recycles, they save four barrels of oil, 18 trees, 360 gallons of water, four cubic yards of landfill space, 60 pounds of air pollutants, 200 gallons of gasoline, 4,200 kilowatt energy hours, and ample energy to heat and air-condition a typical United States residence for half a year.

These days you are always seeing news stories about identity theft and credit card number hacking. Therefore, it’s better to be safe than sorry when it comes to your personal documents. If you own a business and handle sensitive documents, the same goes. As a business, it’s your duty to protect your clients’ privacy. Document destruction can help protect your customers and client’s identities and private paperwork.

Identity theft is the most rapidly growing crime in the United States. Most thieves do their work in the dumpsters housed right behind corporate buildings. Many businesses use a strip shredder to destroy sensitive documents and then dump the remains in the trash and don’t think about them again. Without proper document destruction, you leave your organization susceptible to all sorts of identity theft. It can take years to build a solid reputation with clients, but only a matter of days, or even hours, to destroy that reputation. You can’t afford to take this risk.