Managing Confidential Documents

As our more recent customers and wholesale clients would know, all of our invoicing is now email based. Yes, no more printed invoices! This has reduced our paper consumption significantly which is awesome and it has helped us to stick to our goal for 100% post-consumer recycled materials for our communications.

From time to time we do still have paper wastage. Often this is paper entering our business in the form of envelopes, letter, facsimiles and the like. Sometimes these have sensitive information on them including banking details and personal contact details. So what do you do with this information after it is no longer a corporate necessity?

Obviously, the first response is to recycle it. However, we are not just going to throw it in the recycling bin, not only is it subject to being accessed by people who shouldn't outside business hours but it then also ends up on a shipped to China for reprocessing without being broken down in any way.

When we first opened the business we considered all this. We even considered taking the next step and buying a shredder. Yes, a device that we would use maybe monthly at most and that would add to our power consumption also. We decided against it when we found an alternative.

Did you know that you can put paper into a worm farm?

Yes, you need to soak it first. Often we would flush the farm with water and then place paper in the collecting bucket to soak in the worm wee overnight before tipping it in. We then use the water from the second cycle of water on our plants. (You also need to tear the paper up either before adding it to the bucket or before adding it to the worm farm).



The worms love it and they are one way that we can know for sure that your personal information is disposed of in a way that we know it gone for good.


Do you have a brilliant green office management tip? Share it with us!