Solid Waste Company Offering Free Shredding Service

Garbage Disposal Service, which has an exclusive trash pickup franchise in Catawba County, NC, has started offering free shredding to county government offices.

The company provides locked document containers to the offices, picks up full containers and shreds the documents, said Tammi Landers of GDS.

GDS provides the government offices with certified documentation that their confidential papers have been shredded, Landers said.

For for-profit companies, GDS charges $2 per month for each 64-gallon document container, a $21.50 pickup charge and 10 cents for each pound of paper shredded. If GDS also picks up profitable recycling items, such as aluminum cans, it offsets the shredding charges.

Shredding services for nonprofit agencies sometimes are offered free, Landers said.

GDS has offered document shredding to the public for about 10 years. It started the free shredding for Catawba County government offices the beginning of last month. The service has become more popular in recent years, Landers said, as a new medical records privacy law has taken effect and as the crime of identity theft has increased. Charlotte (North Carolina) Observer