Category: Integra
When I say the word recycling, what types of materials come to mind? Plastic? Aluminum? Paper? Water?.........Really, water? Water recycling is becoming more and more prevalent among recycling enthusiasts.
Getting people to buy in to the concept of water recycling is more difficult than it should be since we have literally been drinking and showering in recycled water for decades. Water is actually one of, if not the most, wasted natural resource, on the planet due to its abundance.
As stated in previous articles, when we discuss recycling, we often think of plastics, aluminum, glass, paper, cardboard, and similar commodities. What about another item commonly thrown away? Food. “Recycling” food seems a little unsettling, but composting is a recycling of sorts.
Generally, we shop around for bargains on services just as we do products that we purchase. It’s sometimes amazing to me that a couple dollars a month will make us switch service providers in most cases. Of course, if the service is a physician or a mechanic, a couple dollars...or even $10 or $20 for the same service may not make us switch. Many of us are very loyal to some types of service providers.
Go Pink in October to raise awareness for Breast Cancer, a disease affecting hundreds of thousands of lives across the country. Research into the cause, prevention and cure of this disease relies on contributions and donations from people just like you.
Many of us don’t know what to do with the ever-problematic piles of leaves in our yard. It doesn’t seem quite right that organic matter would be banned from a landfill, but that is exactly what has happened in Indiana and several other states. According to Indiana Code 13-20-9, leaves are specifically named as being something that the landfills can no longer accept in large quantities. “In the U.S., yard waste accounts for nearly 17% of all Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) according to the EPA. The waste consists of the usual backyard things like grass clippings, leaves and tree trimmings that adds up to nearly 31 million tons each year. Records show that over the last four decades the amount of green waste that ends up at landfills has drastically reduced due to residential composting, waste management, and composting facilities.
Really, what or who is an expert on anything? Generally defined, an expert is a person with extensive knowledge or ability based on research, experience or occupation in a particular field or area of study. Having prolonged and intense experience through practice and education, the expert judges and decides rightly, justly or wisely. Okay, I suppose it’s hard to argue with that, but can that “extensive knowledge and prolonged & intense experience be quantified? According to Malcolm Gladwell’s essay, “Outliers,” it can be. You may remember those three words that every baseball coach and piano teacher recited, “practice, practice, practice.” Gladwell agrees. In fact, he suggests it takes 10,000 hours of practice to make an expert.
Based on the NAID certification requirements for media endorsement, including hard drive destruction, Integra must have a written and verifiable process for the physical destruction of conventional computer hard drives which render them unreadable and
unreconstructable, and we do. We first record and retain the serial numbers of all the hard drives being destroyed for each client and provide the client with printed materials of our procedures and methods as well as certifications of destructions.
When it comes to the proper way to destroy a document, size matters! When you see the next Integra truck roll by, take a note of the AAA certification logo. This top level NAID endorsement is not only highly regarded, but it must be earned and requires diligent effort to maintain. And, to keep this rating, our destruction process and audit methodology must prove that our shredded particle size meets or exceeds the certification specifications produced by the commercial grade destruction equipment we use in our trucks and at our plant.
And we do!
Integra Certified Document Destruction recently partnered with the Elkhart Chamber of Commerce and the Elkhart County Solid Waste Management District for the annual Clean Your Files Day, our goal for the 350 people that showed up was to provide the peace of mind that is inherent with destroying items like old files, tax records, cancelled checks and the like. But, that’s only half of the story.