HomeMy WebLinkAbout04-13-2007 City Holds 11 th Annual Clean Your Files Day Office of the Mayor
NEWS RELEASE
Friday, April 13, 2007
3:00 PM
Contact: Mark Mehall, Solid Waste Management District, 235-9973 ext. 102
Mikki Dobski, Director of Communications & Special Projects, 235-5855
City Holds 11th 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 18, 2007. 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. You may bring up to 100 pounds (approx. 2 '/2 file boxes)
to be shredded for free. 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.
"We invite all members of the community—residents, businesses, and organizations —to `Clean
Your Files' and help make South Bend a Clean City. Each of us has a role to play in conservation,"
stated Mayor Luecke. 'Recycling saves tons of paper from our landfill each year and makes the most of
our natural resources."
Clean Your Files Day is a national event sponsored locally by the City of South Bend, Waste
Management, Inc., Solid Waste Management District of St. Joseph County, and Central Files, Inc. 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 11"'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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