Office Articles

New Year’s Resolution- Be Destructive!

Whether an individual or a business, by this time of the year, you are probably dealing with last year’s records. Of course, any time of the year, you are dealing with junk mail. You know things like credit card offers or warranty expirations or anything else under the sun that might be riddled with someone’s personal information.

You need a Shredder, period. And you need to be taking care of those kinds of things through the year, even as just an individual, but especially as a business. If you handle other peoples’ personal information, you need to guard it carefully when it is still in use and you need to destroy it when you no longer need it.

There are several ways to deal with this discarded information, including using a company that specializes in destroying massive quantities of paper records. When you opt to use a company like this, do your homework. Make sure that they are a reputable company. Check into the training system they use to teach their employees that are doing the work. Do they hire trustworthy employees? Do they do back ground checks? Are they bonded and insured? What kind of liability do they assume once they are in control of the information? Are members of reputable organizations that help to assure that they are legitimate and accountable? These are all very important issues to consider. You certainly don’t want to be handing private information over to a Trojan horse.

If you operate a small business, you may be able to get by with shredding your own documents and disposing of it with the garbage or recycling company. There are many different considerations when choosing a shredder.

Things like;

-         How many sheets at a time do you want to have the ability to do? Naturally, the thicker the stack, the tougher and more expensive will be the shredder.

-         Along with the stack of paper it is capable of, you need to consider the duty cycle, or how long can it run at any one time?

-         Do you want to pull staples and paper clips before shredding, or do you want the ability to run it all through the shredder?

-         Do you want to shred it into confetti? ( This is recommended for higher security) Or just shred it into strips? And again, typically, the confetti style will cost a little more, as well as those that can cut through staples and paper clips and credit cards.

So whether you buy your own shredder, or utilize a company to destroy your private records, you owe it to yourself and to those whom you have private information on, to destroy that information to keep it out of the wrong hands.

Identity theft is a major problem now, and this is one way you can do your part to prevent it.

Greg Whitehead, editor JanitorialCloset, Discount and Wholesale Office and Janitorial Supplies.

Are You Frugal?

Let’s talk about being frugal in the purchases you make concerning your cleaning supplies.

Are you buying the least expensive paper towels? Or are you buying the best value?

Let me explain what I mean. Have you ever visited a facility, let’s say a restaurant, and after washing your washing your hands, you grab a paper towel from the dispenser? As soon as your wet hands touch the paper towel, it disintegrates like cotton candy does in your mouth. Then what do you do? You grab about four more towels to finish the job correctly.

So how do you determine the value of these towels? You would divide the cost per roll by the number of towels per roll divided by the number of towels required to do the job. If you are using a towel that is absorbent and strong, chances are that fewer towels will used.

Other factors to figure into the value of what you’re buying are, 1- will it decrease the frequency of trash runs? 2- Will it decrease the frequency of replenishment?

Now let’s go a step further. If the cheap (bad value) towels are requiring four times more consumption, what is the impact on the natural resources being used to produce these towels? And what is the impact on the roads because the garbage trucks are picking up more waste? What about the land fill?

Another comparison to make would be between a good value in paper towels and the use of electric hand dryers. Let’s take a vote. Who likes to use electric hand dryers? No, really, who really likes to use an electric hand dryer? And who believes that they actually save money on supplies? Also, do they help conserve energy and help save the environment? They probably help to reduce waste, when you consider only the facility in which they are used, and not the overall scheme of things. This is due in part, because many people won’t wash their hands when they realize the only way to dry their hands is with a hand dryer. But what happens then? They grab the door knob with their germy hand and leave. Then the poor sucker who follows them out grabs the door knob and in essence has just touched everything that the previous person has touched. Is that gross or what?

Now let’s say that person has the flu or a cold. Now what? Everybody who touches that door knob for the next several hours picks up the virus, and then some will get sick. Now look at the amount of natural resources being used. Ten people with a head cold. How much facial tissue will be used? How many hours of work will these people lose?

I personally like to use a hands free towel dispenser with a good absorbent towel, and when I leave that room, I grab the door knob using the towel that I used for my hands and then throw it away. And I don’t get sick often, due in part to this practice.

So, if you are a purchaser for janitorial supplies, keep these things in mind. Do your part to make this world a better place. You didn’t know that you could actually change the world with paper towels, did you?      8<)

Greg Whitehead, editor of Janitorial Closet,online wholesale janitorial and office supplies.