What substitute oil can I use to save me the cost of buying an additional
special oil for my Fellowes cross-cut shredder used in my home office?

Shredder manufacturers say to avoid WD40.

It seems some shredder oils are the consistency of a light machine oil
which is heavier than I would have predicted.

I wonder if some of the newer lubes (graphite sprays, PTFE, etc) would do
a good job? I guess the main requirements are probably

(1) to avoid the oil dripping off the blades soon
(2) to have enough lubricant powert os top wear
(3) to avoid holding paper dust such that over time it becomes congealed.

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Advice pages on the internet seem confused:

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20060830093845AA7venA
(1) mineral oil.......food grade
(2) Mineral oil or sewing machine oil.
(3) We use 5W30 motor oil ours and it has been working fine for a year
and a half.
(4) use mineral oil. if you use any type of pertroleum based oil it will
get on the paper you are shredding, and in turn get into the land fill. i
know you are saying it is such a small amount, but how many shreders are
out there??? imagine if everyone used regular oil in their shreders....
imagine the amount of oil that would go into the land fill, and then into
the water table.
(5) They are all lubricants. Any oil is fine, WD-40 or whatever you have.
(6) A very light weight oil. sewing machine oil should do it.

[AFAIK mineral oil is a petroleoum oil]

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I have tended to use a silicone spray lubricant or a silicon + PTFE spray
like these. However but they do not seem to provide enough lube to
prevent cuttings staying on the shredder blade (and I am not applying so
much lube thatthe cuttings stick to the blade).
http://www.maplin.co.uk/Silicone_Gre...th_PTFE.search
http://www.maplin.co.uk/Multi_Purpos..._Grease.search