..wound up with a used no name unit that takes 30+ sheets at a time and turns fast - great for end of year cleanup.
Telcos - "global" most of all - get involved in some funny stuff. A former Navy CPO in Purchasing Department ran records management at one Day Job. Garden-variety industrial crosscut shredder. Of course. Didn't do Manhattan phone books, but "close". Classified Proposals, bound, over a hundred pages per, it "just ate".
Next two steps were borderline "awesome". DoD-approved heavy steel chamber called a "disintegrator". ISTR it had a 5 or 10 HP motor and a slew of heavy steel arms that BEAT paper into mere fluff and lint. It COULD do phone books, and FAST, too. One needed GOOD ear-protection. Might be what embassy's have? I know nada.
Which then fed an incinerator with a perforated rotating burn drum. Same again? MIL-SPEC? State Department? Likewise I plead ignorance.
Combat zone, all I had been issued - or needed - were Thermate grenades. Kinda HARD on the average home or shop, those, but serious-effective if year-end is "broken arrow"
final!
Silly part, civilian side, is that all but my one lone biz unit used Windows computers, and "networked". Any info as traversed THOSE round-heeled hoors could be spied-on before it was even printed to dead-trees if even it ever WAS printed at all.
With that sort of "window" open to whomever, the "physical" burn-bag stuff was mostly a useless "box-tick" as far as "security" goes!
Even so.. it can be CHEAPER than having to go live out of a motel 'coz the residence is chock full of old papers. DAMHIKT!