Updated November 2026 · Southern New Hampshire
How document shredding works: from our counter to the recycling mill
How document shredding works, start to finish: what happens to your boxes at our Tewksbury counter, inside the shredder, in the bale and at the paper mill. Follow one box through every stage, with the price and the paperwork at each step.
99¢ per pound at our Tewksbury drop-off, shredded the same business day. Certificate of Destruction on every job.
- 99¢ per pound
- 100% of shred recycled
- Since 2007
- BBB A+
Quick answer
At New Hampshire Document Shredding, paper you bring to 1215 Main Street, Unit 115, Tewksbury, MA is weighed or counted at the counter, kept in locked handling, cross-cut shredded the same business day, then baled and sent for recycling, where a paper mill pulps it into fiber for new paper. Boxes we pick up follow the same path after they arrive. You pay 99 cents a pound under 10 boxes or $20 per banker’s box at 10 or more, plus $34.90 per job, and every job of our document shredding service ends with a Certificate of Destruction.
How document shredding works, in six stages
People hand us a box and drive away, and most never think about it again. That is how it should be. But if you are responsible for client files or patient records, you should know exactly where your paper goes, who touches it and when it stops being readable.
The short version: your paper goes from our counter into locked handling, through a cross-cut shredder, into a bale, and on to a paper mill. At the mill it is soaked, pulped, cleaned and turned into new paper. Your proof is a Certificate of Destruction, issued for every job.
There are three ways onto this path, and they only differ at the start. After the first leg, every box is handled the same way.
Drop-off
You drive the boxes to our counter, Monday to Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. No appointment. Shredded the same business day at 99 cents a pound, or $20 per box at 10 or more.
Pickup
Our driver loads your sealed boxes and brings them to Tewksbury in locked handling. Same shredding rates plus a zone fee from $129.95. Shredded after the boxes arrive.
Witnessed
You book a time and watch your paper go through the shredder at our office. $1.99 a pound with a $100 minimum, and the certificate is signed in front of you.
The order matters. Your paper is unreadable by the end of stage 3. Everything after that is recycling, not security, which is why the certificate comes from us and not from the mill.
Stage 1: what happens at the counter
Our office is on Route 38 near the I-495 interchange, about 15 minutes south of the New Hampshire line at Salem and Pelham. Park out front. It is free, and staff come out to help you unload. Drop-off is walk-in, Monday to Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., no appointment needed.
Inside, we weigh or count what you brought. Under 10 boxes, you pay by the pound at 99 cents. At 10 boxes or more, it switches to a flat $20 per large banker’s box or $15 per small one. A full banker’s box of paper weighs about 30 pounds, which is how a one-box drop-off lands near $30 before fees.
Those two per-job fees add $34.90 to every job, whatever its size. So 50 pounds costs $49.50 plus $34.90, or $84.40. A hundred pounds costs $99.00 plus $34.90, or $133.90. You pay at the counter, and from there your paper stays in locked handling until it is shredded.
You do not need to unstaple anything. Staples, paper clips, binder clips, rubber bands and file folders can all stay in. Take out three-ring binder hardware, hanging-folder frames and anything that is not paper. Our guide on how to prepare documents for shredding covers the rest, and our drop-off shredding page has directions from the border towns.
If we pick up instead: the same path, a longer first leg
A pickup adds one step at the front. Our driver loads your sealed boxes at your office or home, and they stay in locked handling on the way to Tewksbury. From there they join the same path as drop-off paper and are shredded after they arrive. We do not shred at your address.
- Book and give a count. Book online or call (978) 636-0301 with the address, a box count and who will release the boxes. The zone is confirmed when you book.
- Seal and stage. Close the boxes and keep them somewhere locked until the driver comes. Pricing assumes ground-level or elevator access, and a handling fee for stairs is quoted up front.
- Hand off. The driver loads the sealed boxes. Keep your booking confirmation with the date and box count.
- Transport in locked handling. The boxes go straight to our Tewksbury office.
- Shred and certify. The boxes are cross-cut shredded after they arrive, and the job closes with a Certificate of Destruction.
The transportation fee depends on distance: $129.95 for Zone 1, which covers the Tewksbury area and border towns such as Salem, Pelham, Windham and Plaistow, $159.95 for Zone 2 around Nashua and Manchester, and $199.95 for Zone 3 on the Seacoast and farther north. Our off-site shredding page explains the zones, and our post on chain of custody shredding follows every handoff in detail.
Stage 3: inside the shredder
Every job is cross-cut. A cross-cut shredder slices the paper in two directions, so a page leaves as short particles rather than long strips that someone could lay side by side. Drop-off paper goes through the same business day it arrives.
Staples and clips go through with the paper. That is not a shortcut. Paper mills clean staples out of the pulp later, as you will see in stage 5, so there is no reason to spend your afternoon with a staple remover.
Shredding levels have a whole vocabulary: strip-cut, cross-cut, micro-cut, and the P-1 to P-7 scale from DIN 66399. Our post on paper shredding security levels explains what each one means. The legal test is simpler. The FTC Disposal Rule describes shredding papers so the information cannot practicably be read or reconstructed, and HHS describes paper PHI made essentially unreadable, indecipherable and impossible to reconstruct.
If your policy says someone must see it happen, book a witnessed session. You watch your material go through the shredder at our office and the certificate is signed in front of you. It costs $1.99 a pound with a $100 minimum, plus the $34.90 per-job fees.
What we take beyond paper: hard drives, tapes, CDs, USB sticks and phones are physically destroyed and quoted per item. Bag them separately from the paper so they do not go into the paper stream. Our hard drive destruction page lists what we accept.
Your proof: the Certificate of Destruction
While the shred heads toward recycling, the paperwork heads to you. Every job, drop-off, pickup or witnessed, comes with a Certificate of Destruction. It is covered by the $14.95 HIPAA filing fee, so there is no separate charge for it.
The certificate is what turns “we shredded it” into something you can show an auditor, a client or a court. File it with your booking confirmation and your retention policy. A HIPAA covered entity can also ask us for a Business Associate Agreement before the first job, and we sign one on request.
Keep it with your disposal records for as long as your policy requires. Our page on the certificate of destruction covers what it records and how long to hold on to it.
Stage 4: from loose shred to a bale
Shredded paper is bulky. A full box of documents turns into a much larger pile of fluffy particles, which is awkward to store and expensive to move. So the shred is pressed into dense bales for shipping.
This is normal for recovered paper of every kind. The Robert C. Williams Museum of Papermaking at Georgia Tech describes collected paper being wrapped in tight bales at the recycling center and transported to a paper mill. Baling is what makes it practical to ship paper to a mill at all.
The $19.95 environmental fee on each job pays for this step. One hundred percent of the paper we shred is recycled. None of it goes to a landfill as trash, and by this stage it is already unreadable.
Shredding at home changes this part of the story. EPA says whether shredded paper can be recycled depends on your local recycling program, so a bag of home shred may or may not be welcome at your town’s transfer station. Our post on whether to shred or recycle old paper walks through that choice.
Stages 5 and 6: what the recycling mill does with your shred
At the mill, your shred becomes raw material. Georgia Tech’s papermaking museum describes the process in detail, and it explains why paper particles are no security risk by the time they reach the mill floor. Here is the sequence in plain words.
- Storage by grade. Mills keep recovered paper in warehouses sorted by grade, because different grades make different products. Forklifts move it to conveyors when it is needed.
- Pulping. The paper goes into a large vat called a pulper, with water and chemicals. The pulper chops it smaller, and heat breaks it down into tiny cellulose fibers. The old paper becomes a wet mash called pulp.
- Screening and cleaning. Pulp is forced through screens that catch bits of plastic and globs of glue. Then it spins in cone-shaped cleaners that throw heavy contaminants like staples to the outside and out the bottom.
- De-inking. When the end product needs it, washing rinses out small ink particles, and flotation uses air bubbles and soap-like surfactants to float larger ink and sticky residue to the top as froth, which is skimmed off.
- Refining and bleaching. The fibers are beaten to swell them for papermaking. For white paper, the pulp may be bleached with hydrogen peroxide, chlorine dioxide or oxygen. Brown grades skip this.
- Papermaking. The pulp is thinned to about 99.5 percent water and sprayed onto a fast-moving wire screen. Water drains, fibers bond into a sheet, and press rollers and heated rollers dry it into new paper.
Notice step 2. Once paper is in the pulper, there is no page left, only fiber in water. Your information was already destroyed in our shredder, and the mill finishes the job physically. EPA says paper and paperboard had the highest recycling rate of any material in municipal solid waste, 68.2 percent in 2018.
How document shredding works on price, start to finish
The price follows the path. Drop-off is the cheapest way in, because you handle stage 1 yourself. A pickup adds the zone fee for the first leg. Everything after that, the shredder, the bale and the certificate, is the same either way.
| Large boxes | Shredding charge | Per-job fees | Drop-off total | Zone 1 pickup total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 (about 30 lb) | $29.70 | $34.90 | $64.60 | $194.55 |
| 5 (about 150 lb) | $148.50 | $34.90 | $183.40 | $313.35 |
| 10 | $200.00 | $34.90 | $234.90 | $364.85 |
| 20 | $400.00 | $34.90 | $434.90 | $564.85 |
For three boxes, drive. For thirty, book the pickup. The zone fee is the same whether we load two boxes or forty, so pickups make the most sense once a job reaches the box rate. Every price is on our shredding rates page, and our witnessed shredding page explains the watch-it-happen option.
Frequently asked questions
How does document shredding work at a shredding company?
At our Tewksbury office, your paper is weighed or counted at the counter, kept in locked handling, cross-cut shredded the same business day for drop-offs, then baled and sent to a paper mill for recycling. You get a Certificate of Destruction for every job. Pickup boxes follow the same path after they arrive.
Do I need to remove staples and paper clips?
No. Staples, paper clips, binder clips, rubber bands and file folders can stay in. Paper mills remove heavy contaminants like staples during cleaning, after the paper is pulped. Do take out three-ring binder hardware, hanging-folder frames and anything that is not paper, and bag drives or phones separately.
How fast is my paper shredded?
Paper you drop off at 1215 Main Street, Unit 115, Tewksbury is shredded the same business day. Paper we pick up is shredded after it arrives at our office. We do not promise a pickup on the day you call, so book ahead if you have a deadline such as a move or a lease end.
Is shredded paper really recycled?
Yes. One hundred percent of the paper we shred is recycled. The shred is baled and sent on for recycling, where a mill pulps it into fiber for new paper. The $19.95 environmental fee on each job covers that step. Nothing we shred goes to a landfill as trash.
Can someone read my documents after they leave your office?
Your paper is cross-cut into small particles before it leaves locked handling, so the bale holds shred, not pages. At the mill, the shred is soaked and broken down into individual fibers in a pulper. By the time it becomes new paper, nothing of the original document remains.
Do you shred at my home or office?
No. We shred at one location, our office at 1215 Main Street, Unit 115, Tewksbury, MA. We do not bring a shredder to your curb and we have no drop box in New Hampshire. Our pickup service brings your sealed boxes to Tewksbury, where they are shredded after they arrive.
What does it cost to shred one box?
A full banker’s box weighs about 30 pounds, so a one-box drop-off is $29.70 at 99 cents a pound plus $34.90 in per-job fees, or $64.60. At 10 boxes the box rate applies, $20 each, so 10 boxes come to $234.90 with fees.
Can I watch my documents being shredded?
Yes. Book a witnessed session and watch your material go through the shredder at our Tewksbury office. The certificate is signed in front of you. Witnessed shredding is $1.99 a pound with a $100 minimum, plus the $34.90 per-job fees, and it is by appointment.
Sources
- Robert C. Williams Museum of Papermaking, Georgia Tech, Recycled Paper Appendix (checked November 2026)
- EPA, Paper and Paperboard: Material-Specific Data (checked November 2026)
- EPA, How Do I Recycle Common Recyclables (checked November 2026)
- 16 CFR 682.3, Proper disposal of consumer information (govinfo.gov) (checked November 2026)
- HHS, What do the HIPAA Privacy and Security Rules require of covered entities when they dispose of PHI (checked November 2026)
Start your box down the path
Drive it to our counter, book a pickup, or watch it go through in a witnessed session. Shredded in Tewksbury, recycled in full, with a Certificate of Destruction for your file.
Where we shred
1215 Main Street, Unit 115, Tewksbury, MA 01876. Route 38, near I-495. Free parking out front.
Monday to Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Witnessed sessions and pickups outside these hours by appointment.
- Drop-off: walk in, 99¢ per pound
- Pickup: from $129.95 by zone
- Witnessed: $1.99 per pound, $100 minimum
New Hampshire Document Shredding · 1215 Main Street, Unit 115, Tewksbury, MA 01876 · (978) 636-0301 · Monday to Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.