ShredBank gives back significantly to the community and its flagship CSR Programme is the “Community Shredathon” – a free shredding event for the general public.

The ShredBank Community Shredathon was conceived in 2012 as a way of addressing the growing threat of ID fraud to the general public and also to encourage environmental responsibility among the community in the area of paper disposal. To date, the Shredbank Community Shredathon is the only free regular shredding event for the general public that exists in Northern Ireland. It has now been running nearly every month since 2012.

On the last Friday of the month between 12-2.00pm at Forestside Shopping Centre one of the ShredBank mobile shredding trucks is parked and members of the general public can come during that time and bring their personal documents to get shredded securely on the mobile shredding truck. Members of the general public will bring their personal documents in bags or boxes and hand the material to a ShredBank operative in the mobile shredding truck. The operative will then safely and securely dispose of the documents in the powerful shredders built into the mobile shredding truck. The information is destroyed often in less than a minute! On average there is 40-50 members of the public attend the Shredathon and it has become a recognised event in the Northern Ireland calendar. The members of the public who get their information securely destroyed are invited to make a donation to Alzheimer’s Research. To date, we have raised exactly £29,708.60 for the great work of Alzheimer’s Research. This charity is dear to our heart at ShredBank as one of the co-owners James Carson lost his father to the illness.

The ShredBank Community Shredathon addresses the following community issues:

Encouraging environmental responsibility – by recycling paper is one of ShredBank’s key messages to its market. ShredBank shreds confidential information and then sends all the shredded material to be recycled into tissue products e.g. toilet roll, kitchen roll etc. Its clients receive an annual environmental certificate indicating how many trees that they have saved as a result of recycling with us. To-date ShredBank has saved over 200,000 trees as a result of recycling all its shredded material. All the shredded material generated by the general public at the Shredathon is recycled giving them confidence to know that their information is destroyed in both a legally and environmentally compliant method.

ID Fraud – ShredBank runs the Free Community Shredathon for the general public in order to raise awareness of the importance of disposing of confidential information in a secure and environmentally responsible way to ensure compliance with the latest GDPR legislation and prevent ID Fraud. All shredded material is recycled. Raising awareness amongst the public about the importance of destroying information in a secure way through ‘on-site shredding’ is also a key strategy for our business that closely aligns with this CSR initiative. Not only do these Shredathons provide the community with an opportunity to get rid of bags of paper waste from their homes to raise money for charities, the shredding of confidential material for the general public helps deal with ID fraud that costs the UK economy £193 billion per annum (Experian).

Alzheimer’s Research – The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has revealed ‘Dementia and Alzheimer’s disease’ were the leading cause of death in 2022. Collectively they accounted for 65,967 deaths (11.4% of the total), up from 61,250 (10.4%) in 2021.

Over the last ten years ShredBank have raised £29,708.60 overall for Alzheimer’s Research through our monthly Shredathons. To date, over 5,000 members of the general public have attended these free shredding events.

For more information, facebook us or call on 0800 6335599.