End Of Life media Destruction - Curious

I'm just wondering if the scenario below is commonly used or encountered?

I had a client that used to use commercial tools for End-Of Life destruction of media, but the effort & time taken was just too great, and therefore it became a very costly excercise in terms of manpower.

Fortunately in cases where the media is to be permanently 'retired' as in the case of a bank replacing all PCs minus the hard drives - I found a local clinic's incinerator to be an absolute marvel at helping solve the problem of EOL media destruction, but remove the drive casing 1st for more effective results.

Does anyone else use this method? How effective has it been? Is it common practise?