Things They Should Invent: paper shredders with multiple plastic bags

Some recycling providers want you to put shredded paper in plastic bags.

Special plastic bags are in fact manufactured for this purpose, designed to fit neatly into the bin of a paper shredder.

But this is a security problem.  If you shred a document into a plastic bag, all the pieces of that document are conveniently grouped together in the same bag, whereas if you dump loose shredded paper into the recycle bin the pieces all intermingle with the other recycling (including other shredded paper).  If someone wanted to reassemble the shredded document, surely it would be far easier if all the pieces were in the same bag!

But what if there were multiple bags in the same shredder? For the sake of argument, let's say there's three bags.  The left side of the document goes into one bag, the middle of the document goes into the second bag, and the right side of the document goes into the third bag.

At first glance, this sounds even worse for security - now you have an approximate idea of where on the page the various pieces belong!

But I think it would improve security in a building with multiple shredder.

For example, let's suppose we have an office building with 10 offices, each of which has one shredder, each of which produces one shredder bin of shredded paper per recycling pick-up period.

With one bag in each shredder, you have 10 bags of shredded paper in the building's recycling bin.  If you can locate the bag containing the document you're looking for, all the parts of that document are there. If you're looking for all shredded paper from a specific office, you find one bag and you've got it all.

But what if each of those shredders had 3 bags in it?

Now there are 30 (smaller) bags of shredded paper in the building's recycling bin.  If you can locate a bag containing part of the document you're looking for, you have to find the correct two of the remaining 29 bags to reassemble the document. If you're looking for all the shredded paper from a specific office, you have to find three of the 30 bags.

Even if you steal all the bags and start going through them, it's more time consuming to find the correct three of 30 bags than to find the one correct bag and disregard the rest.

I still think throwing loose shredded paper into the general recycling bin is best for security, specifically because it makes a mess and gets everywhere.  But if it is necessary to contain shredded paper in plastic bags, a system of multiple bags per shredder would increase security in all instances except where the bad guy is standing right there watching the shredded paper be thrown away.