These popular events are scheduled to resume in August offering Westchester residents an opportunity to securely destroy their personal papers.
Today, County Executive George Latimer announced that the immensely popular secure mobile shredder events will start up again beginning on Aug. 1 – events that have been on hold due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The County’s two shredder trucks visit municipalities throughout Westchester providing secure, confidential document shredding services to residents. These events have proven to be tremendously popular. In 2019, thousands of residents took advantage of this program, where each visitor is permitted to bring up to four file-size boxes of personal papers and the County shredded almost 700 tons of documents.
The County’s Department of Environmental Facilities (DEF), the agency that operates the shredder program, works with a contractor to market and sell the recyclable shredded paper produced at these events.
Due to the overwhelming popularity of the shredder program, municipalities must submit a request to host a shredder event and the event schedule is prepared at the beginning of the year. For more information on the County’s documents shredding program and the schedule of upcoming shredder events, read more on the Mobile Shredder or contact the County’s Recycling HelpLine by phone at (914) 813-5425.
DEF Deputy Commissioner Louis Vetrone said: “DEF is excited to resume offering document shredding services to our residents. Fortunately, throughout the COVID crisis we’ve been able to offer shredding services to municipal government agencies, and we’ve kept the Household-Material Recovery Facility (H-MRF) open, which offers document shredding services for residents plus a whole lot more.”
The H-MRF, located at 15 Woods Rd. on the Valhalla Campus is open Tuesday-Saturday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.. If residents are unable to bring their documents to one of the upcoming shredder events they can have them destroyed at the H-MRF. The H-MRF also provides a drop-off location for other hard-to-dispose-of items such as fertilizers, pesticides, household cleaning chemicals, electronic waste, Freon-containing appliances, textiles and more. For more information on the H-MRF or to make an appointment, visit the H-MRF or call the Recycling HelpLine at (914) 813-5425.
During the past few months with residents spending all or most of the time at home, DEF has tracked a marked increase in recycling. For the year, curbside recycling is up over 8% across the County’s Refuse District, which includes 90% of County residents. Much of the increased recycling can be attributed to cardboard boxes containing home deliveries, as well as plastic and metal food and beverage containers due to increased eating at home. It’s interesting to note that there was not a corresponding increase in trash over the same period. For the year, disposed garbage increased only 1.65% across the District. It may be that the additional time at home has allowed residents to be more diligent about recycling. Re-launching the shredder program should add an additional boost to the County’s already robust recycling program.