County Executive George Latimer announced that the immensely popular secure mobile shredder events started up again 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; 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 please visit https://environment.westchestergov.com/residents/recycling-guidelines/mobile-shredder or contact the county’s Recycling HelpLine at 813-5425.
“DEF is excited to resume offering document shredding services to our residents,” said Louis Vetrone, DEF deputy commissioner. “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 Road on the Valhalla Campus is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m.-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 dropoff 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, please visit https://environment.westchestergov.com/facilities/h-mrf or call the Recycling HelpLine at 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 more than 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.
(Submitted)
