Comerica Bank and the records-management company Iron Mountain are offering businesses and residents across the Valley a chance to safely shred unlimited amounts of paper for no charge at the second-annual Shred Day Phoenix this Saturday.
The event will allow attendees to securely shred boxes or truckloads of sensitive paper documents, such as bank statements and medical records, in front of Comerica Theatre, with the support of the Phoenix Police Department. The aim of the event is to protect the community from identity theft and fraud.
“We know that people are having their identities stolen through discarded documents,” said Sgt. Jonathan Howard, spokesman for the Phoenix Police Department. “Shred Day is going to help us by shredding thousands and thousands of pounds of sensitive documents, as well as encouraging people to do so on a daily basis.”
This mass shredding will act as a much-needed prevention of an increasingly relevant crime, said Kyle Tarrance, vice president of corporate external communications at Comerica Bank.
“Identity theft is the fastest growing crime in America,” Tarrance said. “It claims 13 million victims every year, so (Shred Day) is something we can do for the community to raise awareness, help educate people on identity theft and protect them from it.”
Howard said hosting Shred Day annually could help lower white-collar crime rates, which are not only on the rise nationally, but internationally as well.
“Worldwide, it’s definitely a growing trend,” Howard said. “We need to get ahead of the trend and start taking more steps to protect ourselves.”
The event will also benefit St. Mary’s Food Bank Alliance. The event organizers hope to exceed the amount of food that Shred Day Phoenix brought in for St. Mary’s Food Bank last year, which totaled up to nearly 25,000 meals, Tarrance said.
“It’s free to shred, but we’re asking people to bring donations of food or cash to the event,” said Jerry Brown, director of media relations at the food bank. “Last year, we collected more than 3,000 pounds of food at the event, so we’re hoping to get close to that or even more this year — with the holidays fast-approaching — to help us fill emergency food boxes for those in need.”
All of the shredded documents will be recycled.
In addition, the Phoenix Police Foundation will benefit from the event through grants from the sponsors, which will help purchase and train a new narcotics-detecting dog.
Despite the large turnout in 2014, Tarrance said he expects the event attendance to increase, especially with the lifting of last year’s four-box limit.
“We had a great turnout last year,” Tarrance said. “We had about 60,000 pounds of paper that was shredded, securely destroyed and recycled. We’ve done these events in other markets too, and they tend to get bigger and bigger every year.”
Shred Day Phoenix starts at 8 a.m. and goes all the way to 3 p.m. Saturday.
Contact the reporter at Emily.Liu@asu.edu
