Junior Mister Five Hills and Keep Copperas Cove Beautiful host Community Shred Day

By BRITTANY FHOLER
Cove Leader-Press

Residents had the opportunity to shred documents and dispose of electronics at the Community Shred Day hosted by Junior Mister Five Hills and Keep Copperas Cove Beautiful in the rear parking lot of the Copperas Cove ISD administrative building Saturday morning. 
Junior Mister Five Hills Nathan Garner’s platform of service is Keep Copperas Cove Beautiful and promoting sustainability. 
As a service project, Garner teamed up with KCCB again to offer something necessary to members of the community. 
Garner said that offering a shred day is important because it allows for people to bring in their documents and paperwork to be shred, which helps with protecting privacy of important information and makes sure that they’re disposed of properly. 
The company selected by KCCB, Heart of Texas Shred, also offers safe disposal of electronic devices, such as laptops, desktops, etc. Heart of Texas Shred is based in Elm Mott. 
Garner said that proper disposal is important because it helps reduce risks of fire that could be caused by improper disposal of electronic devices and their batteries, and it promotes recycling for the paper-based products. 
The Community Shred Day was held from 8 a.m. to noon on Saturday, with vehicles driving up to the large HOT Shred truck to drop off their bags and boxes of papers and other items. With just an hour left, more than 30 vehicles had stopped by to dispose of their papers and electronic items. 
Garner said that he felt good about being able to offer this as a service to the residents of Copperas Cove. 
Justin Klaus, with Heart of Texas Shred, said that the shredded pieces of paper and other items will be taken back to their shred facility in Elm Mott, where it will be turned into square bales that weigh about 1,200 pounds a piece on average and then loaded onto a truck from Arlington. 
The shredded pieces will eventually become paper goods, whether that is paper plates, paper towels or toilet paper, Klaus added. 
“During COVID, when everybody was out of toilet paper, we were a pretty hot item with a used paper,” Klaus said. 
The electronics that HOT Shred accepts are either crushed and shredded into tiny pieces or are sent to a recycling company that will crush or melt it down. 
“Everything that we take in, it all gets recycled,” Klaus said. “We try to stay away from plastic just because, but as far as like the cardboard, the paper, old phones, old computers and stuff like that, it all gets recycled into something else.”
Klaus said that document shredding is mandatory in some instances, and businesses of all kinds take advantage of these services. There are certain requirements for how certain documents are disposed of, with shredding being required by law, Klaus added. 
  “Within the past 10 years, everything has gone online, so it’s easier to acquire somebody’s address, somebody’s credit card number, their checking account, all that stuff,” Klaus said. “If you’re on the phone with somebody from the bank, they write down your name, phone number, address, and then your checking account number every single time before they start typing it in on their computer, and so it’s just an extra precaution into keeping people people’s information safe and stuff like that. It’s also important for school districts because what a lot of people don’t realize it’s easier to steal a kid’s information. Their name, address, who their parents are, stuff like that, so we’ve kind of urged school districts to think about what the school does with their kids’ information.”