Data protection

As the veteran of many training courses on the Data Protection Act, I take some trouble to shred any family documents which include name and address. We use a fairly basic shredder which just slices paper - not too many sheets at a time - into quarter inch ribbons, which could, if not much disturbed, be put back together again by some criminal or perhaps by some representative of the security state.

Mindful also of the stories of Iranian students putting back together piles of shredded documents once left behind when the US had occasion to abandon its embassy in Teheran in something of a hurry, we go one further and deposit the ribbons in the dustbin on the back patio which is used to hold food waste from the kitchen and green waste from the front garden, pending transfer to the brick bin at the bottom of the garden, the one noticed, for example at reference 1.

Deposit the ribbons in the dustbin and water them a little so that they soften up. Maybe add a little kitchen waste for good measure.

In due course, empty dustbin into brickbin and stir a little with a garden fork. Leave the slugs to do their business.

You would need to be very determined indeed to recover the ribbons after this treatment. And much cheaper than investing in a full-on cross-cut shredder. Which last has the further disadvantage that it might make some visiting criminal think that there was something worth hiding - rather as owning a safe might make said visiting criminal think that there was something worth stealing.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/03/breakfast-for-worker.html.