Oh, that service makes a certain amount of sense. Imagine someone had old printouts with your SSN and banking information on them. You wouldn’t want them just getting thrown in the trash.
This is a great service. You bring out your material to be shredded and dump it in a hopper. It goes into a chute and passes through a series of chopping wheels. You can watch this happening on a screen, which is in that panel the person is looking at on the side of the truck. It’s quite a show as the paper flies around and gets cut to tiny pieces. After a while, the blizzard of paper stops and you just see the choppers spinning clear. They then print out a receipt that shows that you had so many pounds of shredding done. Watching records and documents getting comminuted is very satisfying.
Although some definitions of “comminution” limit it to pulverizing and grinding, I’ve also heard it applied to destructive processes involving shearing and chopping, such as what a garbage disposal in a kitchen sink does. That’s very analogous to what happens to paper in the Iron Mountain secure destruction process. So I think it fits. Fun word to drop into a casual conversation.
Meanwhile, in orthopedics comminuted fracture is a standard term. It describes fractures where the bone shatters into fragments rather than a clean break. Those are much trickier to manage.
December 6th, 2017 at 5:08PM
Oh, that service makes a certain amount of sense. Imagine someone had old printouts with your SSN and banking information on them. You wouldn’t want them just getting thrown in the trash.
December 6th, 2017 at 6:30PM
This is a great service. You bring out your material to be shredded and dump it in a hopper. It goes into a chute and passes through a series of chopping wheels. You can watch this happening on a screen, which is in that panel the person is looking at on the side of the truck. It’s quite a show as the paper flies around and gets cut to tiny pieces. After a while, the blizzard of paper stops and you just see the choppers spinning clear. They then print out a receipt that shows that you had so many pounds of shredding done. Watching records and documents getting comminuted is very satisfying.
December 6th, 2017 at 8:02PM
Ok, Polish Peter, “comminute” is definitely a new word for me. Just looked it up. Thanks.
December 6th, 2017 at 8:03PM
wayward: Absolutely. Mainly, though, I just love the phrase secure destruction you can trust. I think it’s the first line of a … love poem?
December 6th, 2017 at 9:12PM
Although some definitions of “comminution” limit it to pulverizing and grinding, I’ve also heard it applied to destructive processes involving shearing and chopping, such as what a garbage disposal in a kitchen sink does. That’s very analogous to what happens to paper in the Iron Mountain secure destruction process. So I think it fits. Fun word to drop into a casual conversation.
December 7th, 2017 at 9:17AM
Did they steal that slogan from the Marine Corps?
December 7th, 2017 at 9:44AM
Bill R: I think it’s original – I mean, it REALLY caught my eye when I was walking to class in Foggy Bottom.
December 7th, 2017 at 10:45AM
Meanwhile, in orthopedics comminuted fracture is a standard term. It describes fractures where the bone shatters into fragments rather than a clean break. Those are much trickier to manage.