Getting rid of a lot of confidential waste/hiring a shredder

[Blackbirdsinthgarden]

For various reasons (my chronic on-going health issues/death of an elderly parent/partner had a health scare, my house is a mess. I have chronic back pain and find it difficult to keep my house as clean as I would wish. However, 2026 is a new year and a new start, and my mission is to sort this out after Christmas, and I am going to get a deep clean and then a cleaner on a regular basis, as I can no longer manage to do it myself.

However, I have virtually been housebound for nearly a year. I get my groceries delivered online and order almost everything else, like cleaning products/toiletries etc. from Amazon. As you can imagine, my paper bin, which only gets emptied once a month, is almost overflowing every month! Why do online deliveries come with SO much packaging? Most of my neighbours order stuff online too. and we would all like our local Council to change the bottle and paper bins around, so that the bottle bin gets emptied once a month and the paper bin every fortnight, as most bottle bins are hardly ever full.

Anyway, rant over! My question is, which I hope someone will be able to help with, is the amount of confidential shredding that I have accumulated over the last year. I do have a small office shredder and always used to shred as and when, but I have now found (due to circumstances) that I have now just shoved all the letters etc. with our details on in bags in the cupboard under the stairs! It’s getting me down!!

It would take me for ever to shred the paper (as my current shredder cuts out after so long) and I don’t really need to actually buy an “industrial “” shredder, as the current one always did the job in the past. I just need to clear the backlog.

Has anyone used a shredder hire service? Would a company take the confidential waste away? Would that be secure? I wonder if you’ve had to clear out a relative’s house and found a mountain of paperwork? If so, how did you get rid of it?

Any advice would be appreciated. Thank you.

Whenever I have a huge amount of paperwork to get rid of I just burn it in my garden incinerator. Small amounts are fine in a home shredder but as you say, it cuts out after a certain period of use.

Our council don't accept shredded paper in the recycling.

Not every part of sensitive documents needs ybe shredded. If you're going to open each piece of mail anyway, just tear off the bits with names and account details etc and bin the rest.

You can also get what's effectively a thick marker pen to obscure the details.

I get maybe 2 letters a month with anything confidential on it….mortgage statements and maybe one other thing? Can you prevent this going forward by using email more?

and yes, companies will pick up a one off confidential waste and shred it for you.

I have done it by either buying confidential waste bags which get collected (pay per bag) and taking it to a confidential waste disposal site (pay per kilo). They are registered/ regulated and you get a certificate of destruction

Can you give rough indication of cost per KG as we've to do the same next year..Tia.👍

I’ve used a confidential shredding service when we have alot, like this:

https://squabstorage.co.uk/other-services/paper-shredding-evesham/

I too have this issue. My DH died last year and he never threw away any paperwork. I have bags of stuff to get rid of and wondered about the safety of using a shredding service, so following with interest.

I soak it in the sink and put it in the landfill bag.

I have used a confidential waste service before and we use them at work as well. They will give you bags to be sealed when full and then you pay by the weight. I cant remember what the price was as it was quite a few years ago. But it was worth it to get it all gone in one go when moving house.

i think it was around £30 for first 20kg which was minimum charge then £1 per kg on top. Cheaper than buying a decent shredder & saves hours / days

I burn out confidential stuff as well. Bonus points for pretending you're in a period drama throwing a letter on the fire.

This is what I'm doing this weekend. Checked with neighbours, no problem.

Some great replies here - thank you. I do go paperless (bank statements etc.) and use email, but I still receive a lot of junk mail with my name and address on, despite unsubscribing from a lot of websites The mail has accumulated over a year and has just piled up in bags, as I haven’t been in a position to deal with it.

I think I will see this as a work in progress and deal with this in stages next year i.e. cut off the address etc. and fill up the paper bin, then either use a heavy marker pen for the personal details or soak then put in land fill —great idea. Once I’ve completed the task, I’m going to try and deal with every piece of paperwork when I receive it so it won’t pile up again!

I wasn’t aware that some Councils don’t accept shredded paper. I have always used the paper bin for this and never had an issue in the past. I suppose all local Councils differ. I just wish my local Council hadn’t changed the paper bin collection to monthly as the bin soon gets full very quickly.

I don’t have a garden incinerator so I probably wouldn’t feel confident about a fire in our very small garden in such close proximity to neighbours.

Thank you all for your suggestions - much appreciated.

I think one of the issues is shredded paper can be messy. I used to work for the council and if it’s windy you can festoon the entire street in tiny bits of paper with a good gust at an inopportune moment. It’s only really a problem if it’s loose.

Just pay for a couple of secure shredder bags - you fill them, they are collected and disposed of securely and you receive a cert to confirm it's been disposed of correctly. We used this service at work for confidential and private papers.

Ps if you use this service you don't need to redact any info just put in bag, much much quicker

Soak it all in water then pack it all together, when it dries nothing will be legible. Our neighbour does this then when it’s dried puts in the recycling. He doesn’t seem to have a problem with them not taking it.