This may be an odd question considering that it's pretty much the opposite of what most of us normally do, but I was wondering if anyone had any tips on how to destroy a CD-R. Say, for example, you had a CD (data or audio) with sensitive material on it that you didn't want to just throw in the trash and hope that no one ever found it and played it. Yes, I know that ending up in a landfill wouldn't do it any good, but that wouldn't necessarily make it unplayable. I'm reminded of a huge lot of cassettes that my brother and I found in a dump around 1980 that we took home to record over, and we found that they were recordings of some kind of courtroom cases, probably stuff we never should have heard. We were too young to be interested in them and just recorded over them (I still have some of those same tapes, and yes, they still play), but still, whoever just chucked them in the trash was being rather sloppy, I'd think.
So anyway, back to the CD problem. Last night I tried to break one in half, thinking that since it was plastic, it would snap in two if bent hard enough, but no. The thing was nearly impossible to break. I tried using a cabinet door for leverage, but that still didn't bend it enough to break. I did manage to warp the surface and the inner gold layer enough that its data probably wouldn't be recoverable, but the more trouble it gave me, the more I began to wonder if any of you guys out there had a specific procedure in place for getting rid of CDs other than just chucking them. I also tried cutting it in half with some needle-nose pliers and taking a lighter to the writeable surface, and while this did some damage, it still wasn't what I'd consider the data equivalent of using a paper shredder. Certainly not efficient or easy, either.
Any thoughts? And no, before anyone thinks I have a CD full of super secret scary government files or something, don't worry. It was just a back-up of personal correspondence and journal entries that I didn't need anymore (I made a more updated back-up). I know this isn't specifically a recorded sound-related question, but it could be, you know, if one were to have a recording on CD-R like the ones I described above.