It cuts paper into confetti and handles a large volume.As with most things in life, you get what you pay for, and so it is with shredders, too. I've had the small and inexpensive trash-can size in the past, but to me, they're more trouble than they're worth. The small cans fill up too quickly for all the trash I have. On my current model, I even enjoy hauling out the container of confetti paper to dump into the compost pile. It's quite attractive, actually. In short order, all the different colors from the confetti are soon reduced to the same unrecognizable common denominator of finished compost. Even if someday we do actually become a "paperless" society, I can't imagine junk mail ever going away. And as long as there is junk mail,there will be an endless source of compostable material from inside the house.