HomeMy WebLinkAbout04-13-2006 City Holds 10th Annual Clean Your Files Day Office of the Mayor
NEWS RELEASE
Thursday,April 13, 2006
Contact: Mark Mehall, Solid Waste Management District, 235-9973 ext. 102
Mikki Dobski, Director of Communications & Special Projects, 235-5855
City Holds loth Annual Clean Your Files Day
Celebrate Earth Day and help make South Bend a Clean City by participating in Clean Your
Files Day on Wednesday, April 19, 2006. You can catch up on spring cleaning and improve our
environment by bringing your paper by the car load or box load to be recycled for free, at the College
Football Hall of Fame parking lot, from 8:00 AM to 4:00 PM. Volunteers will help you unload your
paper into an on-site, curbside recycling truck.
If you have sensitive material that needs shredded, Central Files, Inc. will have locked secure
document receptacles at the Hall of Fame. The amount you may bring to be shredded for free has been
increased to 100 pounds (approx. 2 '/2 file boxes). Amounts over 100 pounds may be taken directly to
Central Files, Inc., located at 922 South Main St.,just south of the Main and Sample Street
intersection in South Bend. A per pound fee of 11¢ will apply; for more information contact Central
Files at 289-3000.
AClean Your Files Day reminds each of us that we can play a role in building a clean city by
making the choice to recycle at home and at work,@ stated Mayor Luecke. AThe City of South Bend is
pleased to join the US Conference of Mayors in promoting Clean Your Files Day and encouraging
businesses, churches, and community organizations, large and small, to recycle rather than dispose of
tons of paper each year."
Clean Your Files Day is a national event sponsored locally by the City of South Bend, Waste
Management, Inc. and the Solid Waste Management District of St. Joseph County. It is open to the
entire community, including households, churches, schools, businesses, and individuals.
The purpose of Clean Your Files Day is to increase recovery of office paper by purging old
files, and promote workplace recycling by engaging businesses who don't already recycle office paper
to implement a recycling program. This is the I year the City has participated in the event, as part
of the Mayor's Clean City initiative.
Just think of the reasons to recycle:
• Each of us generates on average 4.4 pounds of waste per day per person. In a lifetime, the average
American will throw away 600 times his or her adult weight in garbage. This means that each adult
will leave a legacy of 90,000 lbs. of trash for his or her children.
• It takes 75,000 trees each week to produce the Sunday edition of the New York Times.
• Everyday Americans buy 62 million newspapers and throw out 44 million. That's the equivalent
of dumping 500,000 trees into a landfill every week. If Americans recycled just one-tenth of their
newspaper,we would save 2.5 million trees a year.
• The average American uses 580 pounds of paper each year. As a nation we consume 850 million
trees annually.
• One tree can filter up to 60 pounds of pollutants from the air each year.
• Every year, Americans throw away enough office and writing paper to build a wall 12 feet high
from New York to Los Angeles.
• One ton of recycled paper uses 64% less energy, 50% less water, 74% less air pollution, saves 17
trees and creates 5 times more jobs than 1 ton of paper products from virgin wood pulp.
• Recycling a four-foot stack of paper saves a 40-foot pine tree.
Information on implementing a recycling program in your home or work place will be
available at the event. Waste Management, Inc. provides recycling services throughout St. Joseph and
Elkhart Counties. Solid Waste Management District of St. Joseph County manages the county-wide
curbside recycling program. Central Files, Inc. provides document and data management services for
companies throughout northern Indiana and southern Michigan.
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