Please sort your papers so that you bring ONLY confidential materials. Event staff or volunteers may ask you to leave the line and sort your papers if you bring material that will contaminate the paper being shredded and impact recycling.
Confidential materials include: tax records, medical records, bank & credit card statements, and any document displaying a social security number or financial account number. This is information that someone could use to steal your identity and/or money.
Confidential materials DO NOT include: cash register receipts, magazines, newspapers, empty envelopes, junk mail including bank and credit card offers, mail with your name & address but no other private information, school papers, recipes, books, or photographs. Most of these can go in curbside recycling, except cash register receipts and photographs, which should go in the trash, and books which can go to a Kane County Recycling Center or thrift store.
If it is not paper, we can't take it for shredding. This means no CDs or floppy discs, hard drives, credit cards (cut up with scissors and place in trash), plastic sleeves on files, three ring binders, or garbage.
Amount of material per household:
Quantity limit is the equivalent of 4 banker boxes (12"width x 16"depth x 10"height), or about what will fit comfortably in a normal passenger vehicle without folding seats down.
Packaging your papers:
Any type of open-top box is preferred (e.g., cardboard box, plastic tub or tote, laundry basket, etc.). We will give you your containers back - please understand that we need to keep the line moving, so we don't have time to flatten cardboard boxes. Please make sure each box weighs no more than 40lbs. Small quantities can come in paper bags. Please no plastic bags.
How to prepare your papers:
PLEASE REMOVE all binder clips, ring clips, three-ring binders, hanging file folders with metal hangers, and any other larger metal pieces. These can go airborne when they hit the shredder blades, causing a hazard to event attendees. Staples, paperclips, spiral bindings, manila folders, and file folders without metal are okay to leave.
PLEASE REMOVE all plastic, including page protectors, dividers, file label holders, plastic folders or binders. Envelope windows are okay.
What to expect:
You may need to join a queue when you pull into the event site - our shredding events are often popular! Please pay attention to all event personnel directing traffic and all event signs. Please stay in your vehicle except to use the Pit Stop (northeast corner of the front parking lot).
The line of traffic will move towards the on-site shredding trucks; there are four trucks scheduled for our 2023 events, with each truck holding up to 12,000 pounds of paper. You may be asked to pull into a separate line as you get closer to the trucks. Please follow all event personnel directions.
As you pull up to the unloading area, please pop your trunk or make sure your doors are unlocked, but do not exit your vehicle. Volunteers will take your documents and load them into totes and put your boxes (if any) back in your car. Please pull forward and follow traffic to the exit as soon as your documents are unloaded. If it is important for you to physically see your documents be shredded, you MUST pull out of line and park until the tote for your truck is full and the contents are shredded. You MAY NOT wait in the unloading zone for the batch to be shredded.
Documents are cross-shredded into confetti-sized pieces as they are tipped into the shredding trucks.
