June 14, 2023
How Product Destruction Protects Your Company | Proshred®
How Can Product Destruction Protect Your Business?
By now, you and your organization (hopefully) have begun to look into better, smarter solutions to regularly destroy your data. This includes shredding paper documents as well as destroying electronic equipment like old hard drives.
Following best practices for both of these items, including working with a company like PROSHRED® for all of your product shredding needs, is a wise way to make sure your company and customer data is disposed of properly and securely. It’s a smart step to keep any of this information from falling into the wrong hands and lowering the overall risk of identity theft.
Destruction can also solve space issues – why store boxes and boxes of redundant or unneeded paper files or piles of obsolete/surplus electronic equipment for years when that space could be better used for other purposes?
But not everyone knows that there are other items that can and should be destroyed upon request. PROSHRED® is happy to talk with a representative from your organization about what items could benefit from the disposal, whether it’s finally getting rid of the contents of a basement/storage area or scheduling regular visits.
Like getting rid of sensitive/confidential paperwork about your company, you might want to consider ways to lower the risk of other products getting out in the public, which could potentially damage your company’s reputation or at least cause confusion.
There are all sorts of potential items that we can help dispose of with our product destruction.
Past Company Information
Did you print thousands of flyers when your business opened a decade or so ago? Has significant things changed, such as your location, your marketing, and your product/services? Maybe you changed your company’s site or your phone number. If you’d prefer customers to see you as you are now, rather than what your company used to be like, get rid of these materials and protect your brand. This can even include bigger changes, like your mission statement or your target audiences/ideal customers. Showing you’re a modern organization, including your office décor and even the fashions and styles of your staff, can go a long way in telling and showing your customers you’re eager to help them with modern solutions, rather than looking like you’re out-of-date.
Outdated Promotional Information
If you have coupons, tickets, flyers, or other remaining paperwork from a past promotion and you no longer want to honor the deal, get rid of all of it. Otherwise, a customer might run across one and try to use it. You should still at least inform your front-level staff what to do if a customer who still has their own copies brings them in, but removing most of your supply should reduce the odds of this happening.
Branded Apparel
If clothing like t-shirts or polos ends up, say, at a thrift shop, it could lead to people buying one, wearing it, and falsely claiming that they’re with your organization, including doing or saying off-brand things that could confuse anyone they interact with. These items also might include an abandoned logo or other company images that have been updated, such as fonts, colors, or slogans.
Uniforms
Public safety organizations such as law enforcement should take extra steps to make sure their surplus/used uniforms stay away from the public. This could prevent the possibility of someone wearing one and claiming to be employed by a particular agency or organization, such as a police department. Medical uniforms like scrubs could be potentially contaminated and are better off being destroyed.
Laminated Products
Items that you may think are not allowed in paper shredders but have the same level of confidentiality required should still be properly disposed of. This type of product destruction can include expired licenses, corporate ID cards, phone lists, credit cards, and similar items.
Prescription Bottles
Not only could these include unused medication, which is a health risk if someone gets ahold of it, but they also could include personal information such as name, address, phone number, type of medication, and health provider. All of these items on the label could be potentially used for identity theft, including prescription abuse or fraud.
Ensure Peace of Mind with Proshred®
Like with our other scheduled shredding services, PROSHRED® is happy to provide you with all the details that the product destruction you were seeking actually took place. We’ll present you with a Certificate of Destruction and specifics about when it took place. All of these precautions can help provide you with better peace of mind that your items were properly disposed of and won’t end up in the wrong hands.