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Confidential waste disposal made secure, compliant and simple
Smarter shredding starts here, with a service created to securely dispose of any and all confidential waste your business handles.
From 11 operating centres covering the whole UK, Restore Datashred provides a reliable confidential waste disposal service to destroy any sensitive or proprietary information and keep your organisation safe from data breaches, fraud and regulatory fines.
Working alongside anyone who takes responsibility for sensitive documents, whether you’re a facilities manager, compliance and data protection officer, or an office manager or PA, we’ll help you understand your responsibilities, the law, and how you can protect your information, your customers and your company.
What is confidential waste?
Confidential waste refers to any document (or device) that contains personal, proprietary or sensitive information about your customers, suppliers, or your employees. It also covers any information that could put your business at risk if it was read by a competitor or a member of the general public.
Confidential waste isn’t limited to documents. Your hard drives and storage media can also contain potentially sensitive material, meaning they should be destroyed by a confidential disposal expert. Just deleting a file from your computer isn’t always enough, as some information can be recovered even once it’s supposed to have been removed.
For a full breakdown of what counts as confidential and how to handle it day to day, see our resource hub or our guide to confidential document disposal and paper shredding services.
The law on confidential waste disposal
UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018 lay out responsibilities for organisations who handle any data considered secure, confidential, or otherwise sensitive. You need to make sure that you don’t keep that data for longer than necessary, and that when that time is up you anonymise or erase that data entirely.
In practice, secure disposal means you need to:
- Shred paper records so they can’t be reconstructed
- Physically destroy hard drives, solid state drives and other storage media
- Prove the disposal has taken place correctly
The law doesn’t name a shredding standard, but BS EN 15713:2023 is the recognised one. It sets out what counts as the safe and secure destruction of sensitive material. A reliable confidential waste management service will be able to prove that they follow this code of practice when they destroy data with mobile equipment, or they relocate and destroy that material elsewhere.
A BS EN 15713:2023 compliant company will be able to show the right accreditations, and then explain how they mitigate your risk, safeguard your data, and prove the safe disposal of your documents with a certificate of destruction explaining when, where and how they were destroyed.
That way, if the ICO or an auditor needs to make sure you’re compliant with the law on secure document destruction, you can show them you’ve done everything right.
How secure confidential waste disposal works
A secure service documents every step, so you can prove the shredding was done properly.
Step one
You secure the documents or media in lockable bins or sacks
All sensitive documents need to be kept secure at all times. Even if you’re sending them for confidential waste shredding, you need to keep them safe and protected.
Our confidential waste service works by providing you with secure lockable cabinets or confidential shredding bins that keep your information safe and fully accounted for.
Step two
The secure bins or sacks are collected
Once you’ve secured your documents, you need to transport them to where they’ll be destroyed. Some services can destroy confidential waste on-site, while others will require your bins or sacks to be collected and taken to a secure shredding centre.
We’re able to provide on-site shredding for paper documents, or remove them to one of our 11 operating centres.
Step three
The documents are transported with a full chain of custody
If your documents leave your site, they need to be someone’s responsibility and a full chain of custody should be established at all times. You need to know who’s taking charge of security.
Our customers know Restore Datashred’s Secure Collection Operatives (SCOs), who prove their identity and confirm that the chain of custody has passed over to them.
Step four
All documents are completely destroyed
It’s not enough to use a basic shredder for confidential waste shredding. Paper needs to be cross-cut shredded so it can’t be pieced back together. At Restore Datashred, every collection is destroyed to BS EN 15713:2023, either on-site in a mobile shredding vehicle or at one of our secure operating centres.
Step five
The chain of custody is closed
With your sensitive documents or drives safely destroyed, you should then be provided with proof to close the chain of custody. At this point, Restore Datashred will issue the final certificate of destruction to prove all your collected documents have been destroyed in line with BS EN 15713:2023 standards.
On-site or off-site shredding: which is right for you?
Destroying your confidential materials can be done at your premises, or at one of our secure operating centres. Both will see your material completely destroyed, both will ensure an auditable chain of custody, and both will result in a full certificate of destruction to prove that your items have been properly disposed of.
For most customers, the choice really comes down to cost-efficient scaling versus the extra peace of mind of keeping eyes on your documents at every step.
On-site mobile shredding
- Preferred by customers who want to keep eyes on their confidential data
- We deliver a compliant lockable bin to keep your waste secure
- You let us know when you’re ready to shred
- We bring a mobile shredding vehicle to your site
- You see the process as we completely shred your confidential information
- A waste transfer note and certificate of destruction is issued
- We bale and recycle your shredded paper to keep it out of landfill
Off-site shredding
- Preferred by customers who need regular, cost-effective shredding
- We deliver a compliant lockable bin to keep your waste secure
- You let us know when you’re ready to shred
- We collect your material in a secure vehicle
- We completely shred your confidential information at one of our centres
- A waste transfer note and certificate of destruction is issued
- We bale and recycle your shredded paper to keep it out of landfill
Regular pickups or one-off confidential waste collection?
Not all companies have a continual flow of confidential data that needs destroying on a monthly or even weekly basis. For some, their GDPR commitments and the nature of their work means confidential waste disposal is more ad-hoc, and ordered as required. Whichever camp you find yourself in, our confidential waste disposal services will work for you.
Regular collections
The usual business in need of regular confidential waste collection is a larger company with multiple facilities. Volume is high, and a single collection partner makes it easier to prove your compliance and track chains of custody. In this instance, regular shredding makes sense as you keep confidential paperwork flowing into the bulk paper shredding service on a regular basis.
One off confidential waste collection
Maybe it’s a big office move, an end of contract clear-out, or you just don’t handle that much paperwork. Just because you don’t need regular shredding doesn’t mean you don’t need secure, reliable shredding. Our one-time shredding service was designed for just this kind of job, with our 48-hour turnaround Swift Shred service providing rapid destruction for those urgent projects.
Beyond paper: hard drives, media and branded products
There’s more to confidential waste than just paper. There’s the obvious (digital media and hard drives) and the not so obvious. Branded goods and uniforms also need to be disposed of carefully, and legacy storage such as tapes have to be handled carefully too.
In these circumstances, you’ll need a secure document destruction service that can handle more than reams of paperwork and stacks of folders.
Hard drive shredding
Secure hard drive shredding protects sensitive data by destroying your drives to the H-3 security standard. This level of destruction physically renders the drive unusable and ensures your data can’t be recovered using conventional methods.
Tape shredding
If your business is still holding on to DLT, LTO and magnetic tapes filled with confidential information, we can free up your storage space and help you meet your compliance requirements with secure tape shredding for magnetic storage formats.
Product and textile shredding
From uniforms and ID cards to counterfeit goods or unsellable stock, we’ll protect your reputation and your intellectual property by providing a product and textile shredding service that can destroy fabrics, plastics and metals just as easily as paper. All handled in line with UK GDPR.
Confidential waste disposal by sector
Restore Datashred is trusted in all sectors where confidential waste needs to be securely disposed of to ensure data security and audit compliance.
That includes:
- Education and universities, where sensitive information has to be carefully disposed of at the end of terms, semesters and years to protect pupil, student and staff records.
- Public sector and government, where we helped DVSA keep collections across multiple sites on schedule and on budget.
- NHS and healthcare, where we’ve worked with Community Health Partnerships (CHP) with disposal that meets their corporate social responsibility and their Net Zero goals.
- Finance and legal sectors, where our ability to provide full audit trails and chains of custody help our clients meet their regulatory requirements without compromising on security or confidentiality.
- Defence sector, where we live up to the very highest standards of security.
- Accountancy, where large volumes of financial information need to be regularly disposed of in a provably secure way.
And in every sector around the UK, we’re able to help with confidential waste disposal after office clearances or other relocation or refurbishment projects. Our secure destruction goes beyond paper too, as when we helped The Salvation Army securely shred four tonnes of textiles.
Sustainable disposal: where your shredded paper goes
Once your documents are destroyed, your legal duty is met, and the certificate of destruction proves it. For us, the next step is confidential waste recycling, because we don’t send shredded paper to landfill.
Paper recycling is a key part of our disposal process. Cross shredding makes documents all-but impossible to piece together, but when those shreds are part of dozens of different recycled paper products, there’s no way of even retrieving them.
In 2025, we sent 57,000 tonnes of shredded paper to be recycled. Our Restore Recycle service handles a wider range of business waste too.
Why choose Restore Datashred?
Organisations choose us for national reach with local service, and a certificate of destruction with every collection.
We cover the UK from 11 operating centres with 190+ collection and mobile shredding vehicles. Read more about Restore Datashred, and see how the work is audited in our accreditations:
BS EN 15713:2023
Ensures the destruction and safe, secure disposal of any confidential or sensitive material.
ISO certifications
ISO 9001, ISO 14001, ISO 27001 and ISO 45001 certify how we manage quality, the environment, information security and health and safety.
BS 7858
BS 7858 covers the security vetting of every member of staff who handles your material.
Frequently Asked Questions
Under UK GDPR, you have to dispose of personal data securely so it can’t be read or recovered, and be able to prove it. For most organisations, that means using a professional confidential waste company that destroys material to BS EN 15713:2023 and issues a certificate of destruction.
If your waste is being destroyed on-site, it’ll be transferred to our secure disposal vehicle where it’ll be shredded straight away. If it’s being destroyed off-site, we’ll collect your waste in a secure vehicle, transfer it to one of our secure operating centres and destroy it there, then issue your certificate of destruction.
Restore Datashred always provides proof in the form of a certificate of destruction showing when, where and how your confidential waste is destroyed.
That depends on how much waste you have. If waste is regularly building up to the point you’re running out of storage space, a regular collection will stop that from happening. You’ll also need to have any waste collected and destroyed within the timeframe set out by your GDPR commitments.
Yes. Restore Datashred doesn’t send shredded paper to landfill: it’s baled and sent to paper mills to be recycled into new paper products.
For any other questions, take a look at our resource hub, or see our shredding prices.
Get a confidential waste quote
Whether you need a regular collection or a one-off clearance, we’ll quote for certified destruction with a full chain of custody and a certificate every time. Get in touch for a quote, or call 08003764422 for advice.
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