To shred or not to shred...

I have a great paper shredder. It rocks. It can shred paper or even credit cards. In a world of identity theft and constant pre-approved credit card offers, I considered it a mandatory thing.

But all that changed not long ago.

My recycling center no longer accepts shredded paper. Apparently shredded paper clogs the sorting machine. My first thought was - if ever individual who has a recycling can paid $1-3 more per month I'm sure we could afford a few workers to do a pre-sort of the recycle stuff to ensure that it wasn't an issue. But then I realized - it gets everywhere. I've gone to pull something that was accidentally tossed from the recycling can and it was a disaster. I can only imagine how awful it would be once everything was dumped in the truck. [Note, we have on trash can and one recycle can. All stuff goes in the same can and then is dumped into a "recycle truck" once a week] This isn't even the worst issue for our local recycling center. Can't tell you how many folks I've seen with bagged things (No bags allowed), tree trimmings (no nature!), soda boxes (can't be recycled due to plastic film), and more stuffed into the recycle container. I recently found out that my city pays over $250K a year to truck the "trash" from the recycle center over to the dump each year. Are you kidding me? That is insane! And with the price of gas going up - that number is only going to get higher.

Back to my original thought here. So, I called the credit associations to put myself on the list to not get pre-approved offers anymore. Some still trickle in, but I'm hoping that will end soon. But what do I do with it all?

Currently my plan is to go through each piece slowly looking for any identifiable piece of info or a special code reserved just for me - and I rip that off and shred just that chunk. If it's several times on the same piece of paper, the whole thing gets shredded. But MAN that takes SO much more time!

So here I am, spending 30-45 extra minutes of earth loving, identity protecting time reading, reviewing checking, making piles and shredding. Thinking to myself over and over - to shred or not to shred? Protect my identity, or protect the earth? But when I see the pile of shredded paper going into the trash, I can't help but think that there should be away for me to do both at the same time.