Destruction of microfilm is a challenge these days. Diazo or silver fiche
will go through almost any commercial grade shredder, but as you pointed out
 the strips or cross cut particles can still hold a large amount of
information. Our biggest challenge was what to do with roll microfilm,
either diazo or silver, in that it will not feed through any standard
shredders. We used to have a hammermill in the area that we used but it has
long gone on to becoming a newspaper shredder to create insulation.

We used to recycle all silver halide (master) microfilm through silver
recycling companies and actually realize a small residual return but since
the value of silver has been very low in recent years the cost of going
through these recyclers has become prohibitive. The last time I checked they
were charging $80/100 lbs or $1600/ton for "smelting" of film to recover the
silver.

I found a company named Safe Harbors who operates incinerators all over the
country and have used them in the past. Their rates were higher than you
might want to pay but I found that they could burn the pallet, gaylord, film
 and reels with virtually no handling on our part which was a big plus.
Their rate, provided I could bring the load in ton lots, was $700/ton at the
time

I was contacted by a large regional company that offered grinding of the
film. The process of grinding film into small particles also effectively
destroyed the readability of the particles due to the high level of stress
the film had to undergo to actually get through the grinder screens. This
service cost 40% less than the incinerator option at $420/ton

We now put our fiche, jackets and diazo duplicates through the same process
as our roll film.

Hope this helps! Good luck!



Janie Wait, CRM, MBA
President
Director of Marketing
Intermountain Record Center, Inc
3765 Airport Parkway, Casper, WY 82604
PO Box 2770, Mills, WY 82644
307-265-9553
307-237-8225
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www.intermountainrecords.com

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