Dust Control – Soil Stabilization – Erosion Control

Posts Tagged ‘consortium inc’

Paper shredding is growing into a big business. Recycling and the green movement certainly planted the seeds, but regulators have added the fertilizer. Industry-changing laws have been passed to govern document security in accounting, healthcare and banking, and shredders of many varieties are becoming the tools of those trades.

Five or six years ago Warde Comeaux knew only a few people who shredded documents for a living. Most businesses he knew relied on recyclers to get rid of their unwanted paper—including documents. With regulation proliferation, clients began coming to him for advice on getting into the document destruction business. Comeaux is principal of Fire Protection International Consortium, Inc., a consulting firm with locations in California and in Florida. The more entrepreneurs who build their companies around paper shredding, the greater the need for safety consciousness—paticularly fire safety.

Dust combusts

Many of these entrepreneurs may not know, or they may forget, that paper shredding produces dust, and dust is combustible. Fires are quite common in shredding operations, and Comeaux has investigated his share. Two were recent. One was a regular fire (they oiled the machinery too much), and the other was a dust conflagration.

Paper dust in a paper shredding operation can catch fire from a spark generated by metal entering the process. Paper clips, notebooks, and other metal parts can set off a dust explosion or ignite loose fibers of paper.

“Dust can build up in a cloud and if the cutters hit something and you get a spark you get a flash and a small fire,” Comeaux says. “If you don’t stop the machine and clean it of dust periodically, combustible dust can build up throughout the building. That can lead to a worse loss.”

A small fire can even travel from the shredder, up a conveyor and into a baler, and the fire could smolder inside that bale until it is delivered to the mill or recycling center.

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