FIELD OF THE INVENTION

This invention relates to shredders. More particularly, it relates to shredders for cardboard.

BACKGROUND

A paper shredder is a mechanical device used to cut paper into either strips or fine particles. Government organizations, businesses, and private individuals use shredders to destroy private, confidential, or otherwise sensitive documents.

Shredders range in size and price from small and inexpensive units designed for a certain number of pages, to large units used by commercial shredding services that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and can shred millions of documents per hour. While the very smallest shredders may be hand-cranked, most shredders are electrically powered.

Shredders over time have added features to improve the shredder user's experience. Many now reject paper that is fed over capacity to avoid jams; others have safety features to reduce risks. Some shredders designed for use in shared workspaces or department copy rooms have noise reduction.

With society's increasing awareness of the world's dwindling supply of natural resources and overflowing landfills, many communities are providing and even mandating recycling services to its residents. The benefits of these efforts have already begun to be seen and will continue to be realized into the future. However, as with most beneficial programs, these efforts are accompanied by some burdens.

Perhaps one of the biggest burdens associated with recycling is the amount of space taken up in one's home by the recycled product before it enters the recycling stream. And of all of these recycled products perhaps none takes up more space than that of cardboard. This is especially true due to the large amount of cardboard that is utilized in the delivery process of goods ordered over the Internet. Even with crushing, folding, and cutting of cardboard products, they still occupy a large amount of volume.

Accordingly, there exists a need for a device by which the physical space occupied by cardboard to be recycled can be reduced while improving the overall efficiency of the cardboard recycling process. The consumer will have confidence knowing the large amount of boxes they receive from online purchases are being returned directly to the box manufacturer for recycling.

