View Single Post
  #4   Report Post  
Posted to uk.d-i-y
Andy Dingley Andy Dingley is offline
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 5,175
Default Cheap Cardboard shredder

On 2 Aug, 23:41, S R wrote:

I have looked for compactors but they all look expensive. So first question is
does anyone know of any cheap compactors or shredders for cardboard.


The trick is to dismantle boxes, rather than shredding them. They're
far weaker along the ready-made fold lines and will easily dismantle
into flat sheets that stack pretty well in a dumpster. When I had to
last deal with this problem in bulk:

* There's a box-cutting knife, one with a shrouded knife blade
although it took a few goes to find one with a big enough jaw to take
a thickness or two of heavy box cardboard. This is kept handy by the
dumpster and isn't used or removed for any other jobs. You can't tear
cardboard boxes as there's always some tape or something in the way.
You can't use a Stanley knife or someone will manage to cut themselves
before long.

* There's a cardboard dumpster. Nothing else goes in it, only
cardboard goes in it, only flat cardboard goes in it. This then
becomes pretty much self-compacting. Any unflattened boxes in there
are taken out, flattened and put back.

* Cardboard is kept dry. Damp cardboard is weak and unpleasant to
handle, so no-one then wants to tidy it up and it gets left.

Everyone needs to be aware of the first two and it becomes a hanging
offence to breach them. You do need that segregated dumpster.

Shredders and compactors need power, which is where the money goes.