Your Confidential Documents Could End Up Halfway Across the World

A Real Commodity

One person’s trash is another’s treasure. Scrap paper may seem like a nuisance, but it’s actually a vast and valuable trading commodity. Paper is one of the most widely-recycled materials in the world. Americans use 85 million tons of paper annually, and it can be recycled up to seven times.

International Travels

A large part of the recycled paper trade is international. Just as American Express is welcomed around the world, so is your recycled paper from your household or business “blue bin.” In February 2021 alone, the US exported 1.32 million tons of recovered fiber, and the top three destinations were India, Mexico, and Vietnam. During the trip to these world destinations, your discarded confidential document passes through hundreds of hands, visible to all those eyes, and may get separated from the load in transit or sit abandoned in open warehouses for extended periods of time. That’s a lot of opportunity for your information to be exposed and at risk of identity theft.

Removing the Risk

To keep your information from traveling where you don’t want it to, you need to remove the risk at the source. Before tossing unwanted documents into the blue bin, make sure they get destroyed. Shredding your unwanted documents will eliminate the possibility of identity theft. Then it doesn’t matter where your paper travels to after it leaves your hands.

Better yet, leave the task of shredding and proper disposal of printed confidential documents to the qualified, secure and compliant shredding professionals of a reputable shredding company. They will destroy your documents beyond recognition. They can even provide onsite shredding to leave you with peace of mind.

If you live or work in the Pennsylvania and Tri-State Area of Maryland, Delaware and New Jersey and would like more information on residential or commercial shredding services, please call Wiggins Shredding at 610-692-TEAR (8327) or complete the form on this page. We’d love to hear from you.