Just offering this up, since cardboard is normally a pain in the neck to cut up and add to a bin.

As an additional bonus, it has an "OFF" position, which I like since I have kids and I worry that little fingers will go exploring. I kept my old shredder unplugged unless I needed it, which was a pain when I wanted to quickly shred some junk mail, etc.

I'll have to keep an eye out for this one. I've been cutting the cardboard with utility scissors into squares. I looked into CD shredders, but most are too thin and the ones that can handle it would require me to cut the cardboard at cd width so i'd be cutting regardless.

How much did it cost and did you get it at a chain (office depot, staples)?

Charles

Mariann

It was a coal-fired Fellowes Power-Shred 310 table-top strip-cut shredder weighing more than 25 pounds! It mows through staples, paper clips, credit cards, stacks of paper, cardboard, hacked-up body parts (!) – Heck, you almost have to TRY to get it to jam. It’s a bit of a dinosaur, but still a marvelous shredder. Incredible what some people will throw away.

I think it’s somehow poetic that I use ^someone else’s^ garbage to shred ^mine^ so that the worms can work their moist magic on it to provide me with a useful product that some unfortunate folks have to purchase with real money.

It can be a wonderful world.

Chip

Now I'm looking for a good cheap food processor. I bought one at Wal-Mart for about $7, but it only holds about a cup at a time. I tend to clean out the fridge the night before trash day, so it takes about 5-7 loads to process all the worm food. Any suggestions?

For your foodprocessor, Salvation Army and Goodwill stores come to mind, and the like.

Good hunting...

TC

Marshall

I Recommend Fellowes 32057 Powershred P-57Cs Shredder
This is a great shredder, I had lots and lots of old papers waiting to be destroyed for a long time. The shredder I had burned out after a few hundred old checks. This one never missed a beat. I should have purchased this item long ago.

I saw your discussion about cutting up cardboard with scissors? If you do not have one of those shredders large enough to handle cardboard, try the way we do it. We just cut the cardboard into approximately 12" x 24" pieces (or a little smaller) then run them through our leaf shredder. It does a great job and shreds cardboard into approximately 1 x 1 1/2" ragged pieces. The ragged edges helps it start to softening so the worms can eat it sooner.

At work I had bought a confetti shredder which makes the pieces all small and smaller than the cross cut shredder. (It was the staples brand shredder)

Karen

(My daughter read this over my shoulder and shuddered at what I thought was adorable. I think she is adorable too. But then there is no accounting for taste. )

Are you talking shirt board like cereal boxes and pizza boxes are made of or tasty, homey, corrigated cardboard? Two vastly different things. Both of which have no catagory for egg carton or coffee tray cardboard. When we talk cardboard are we all talking the same langage?

I add all the egg carton, coffee tray cardboard I can find to my system. I want to increase the numbers to handle corrigated cardboard. Cereal boxes I am ok sending to recycling.

What type of cardboard is it you all are shredding?

Anybody not shredding and adding whole and letting ninety, billionty worms do the work?

This is a great question that I was wanting to ask. Thanks for bringing it up!

Just a thought, you ever considered just using a paper shredding company? You can mostly shred your yearly stuff for less than $40. That means no messy paper recycling, no noise, no removing paperclips/staples, no hours wasted shredding documents. What takes 8 hours with a 5 page shredder takes 1 min for a shredding. Most people don't consider the cost of your time when you are shredding. On top of that you are supporting a local company, not a factory overseas and most are bonded so there is added insurance. Check out our document destruction company at http://www.calgaryshredding.com We are located in Calgary Alberta but I'm sure you can find something local. Our name is Best Shredding.

It's not practical for most people to save up months of paper products to have shredded all at once. Then we would need to store large amounts of shredded material for use in the following months. Most of us are using only certain types of paper and we certainly would not want any staple bits in our compost.

Your business and the points you make are completely valid and reasonable for businesses of a certain size and type (not all businesses need to shred their paper). It is not practical for people in this forum and your marketing efforts here are inappropriate.

I too find hawking wares and services on these forums to be completely out of line. Plus when us worm-keepers shred it is for two purposes- we protect our documents falling into the wrong hands but also we use it for bedding/food. So we do not want it mixed with plastic from credit cards and envelope windows.

Personally I use a cheapie shredder for my junk mail, documents and the flat cardboard. Corrugated board is a little tougher so I have been using a box cutter. I still get narrow pieces, maybe an inch by 3/8... and usually without adding any blood to the mix...