Shredder Power!

I work at a community college in Rhode Island. As a staff person in the Nursing department I generate a lot of sensitive material that needs shredding. When I started working here last year there had been a 2-3 year backlog of material that should have been or could have been shredded. There was only one shredder on the whole campus. I broke it. It had been around for 10 years or so and would have lasted for much longer, but the plastic gear stripped a couple teeth that made it too expensive to fix. I told my department head that I needed a shredder so she ordered one for me.

The shredder I received is the Fellowes Powershred PS 70. It’s about 2 feet high, a foot and a half wide, about 8 or 9 inches deep. It fits nicely under the desk where my laser printer and Fax machine are and is easily accessible. The shredding drops into a bin that slides in and out of the bottom of the unit pretty easily. The shredder will not activate without the bin in place due to a safety switch.

I usually just leave it on. There is a light sensor that detects when paper is being placed into the mouth of the shredder so I don’t have to keep turning it on and off for each feeding, nor does it run continuously when the switch is on. The sensor activates the motor and the paper gets drawn into the maw and the teeth gears tear it into ¼ inch strips. It can shred up to 12 sheets of regular 20 lb. bond paper at a time and it eats up staples and paperclips with no problem.

The Office Products catalog lists it at $307, but you may find it also at various office supply stores for maybe less. The three year backlog of papers took only a few days to shred, mostly old exams and anything with student information on it. By holding the paper at the top as I drop it in and it automatically begins to shred and feed itself I can easily keep my fingers clear of the mouth. It runs for a little bit after it shreds a set of paper so that if I am continually feeding it, it will keep running. It will also shred transparencies, but those need to go in one sheet at a time for proper stripping. If anything does jam then I just push the switch into the reverse position, let the paper back up a little and then go forward.

I had to empty out the bin after about a 2 inch stack of paper was shredded and it can quickly fill up a large trash bin with looses strips of paper. I wish I could have set the shredder right on top of the large trash bin but then the bin safety switch would not allow it to run. As for maintenance there really isn’t much other than emptying the bin and sometimes pulling out loose paper strips from under the shredder or cleaning out the tiny little “shredder dust” of paper that might accumulate inside and outside the bin.

If you generate lots of sensitive material that gets used for a short time then needs discarding, this shredder is great to use.