Greenius Shredding & Recycling Dream Come True!

It’s true.  I’ve been dreaming of this day for several years now and I’ve got to say I feel even better than I thought I would.  I’m downright giddy in fact.

I just got rid of 14 cartons of old paper files and 8 cartons of old VHS tapes, reclaimed all that space in my attic and my garage and didn’t have one scrap of any of it go into a landfill.  Yee ha!

Your friendly neighborhood Greenius is a fastidious filer and I have every financial record and work related project file archived going back to 1979 – which amounted to storage box after storage box jammed full of papers in files filling my attic and garage. 

For years now I’ve been wanting to have a shredder truck come to my house so I could get rid of all but the last 7 years worth of records, but I’ve been too cheap to actually make the call and dig into my wallet to pay for the truck to show up at my door and securely shred then recycle all that shredded paper.  I knew that one day I’d get lucky enough to participate in a free community shredding day and get rid of all those files for nothing.  But for one reason or another I kept missing out on the chance when it came.

So when I found out that on Saturday, October 8, my city of Redondo Beach would have free document shredding by Iron Mountain Shredding Company, with no limit of how many boxes I could have shredded, I knew I had hit the jackpot and my heart lept with joy as I did the happy dance around my garage.

The weekend before I did the heavy lifting, reviewing all the cartons and then moving the 14 to be shredded into a staging area, then removing all the papers from their file folders along with all the paper clips in each folder so I could reuse them all.  Yeah, I’m that kind of guy and I’m never going to have to buy another file folder or box of paper clips for as long as I live!  Another huge thrill for your Greenius.

But the biggest thrill was still to come as I loaded all those carton into my wife’s Honda CRV yesterday and drove them all over to the Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center where volunteers helped me unload that haul and I got to watch the Iron Mountain Shredding Truck make mincemeat out of all that papers in nothing flat at zero cost to me!  Do I know how to have fun, or what?

While reviewing all the cartons of papers to be recycled I also found 7 cartons of VHS tapes of old TV shows I had taped and videos I had written for different corporate clients over the years – stuff I was never going to watch or need again.  But where to recycle them?

None of the usual places I take recycling to would accept them or knew who would. 

After Googling and calling around with no luck I finally visited the Earth 911 site and discovered their Recyclo-pedia that told me exactly what I wanted to know.

Earth 911 is an “environmental services company that addresses solutions for products’ end of life for businesses and consumers” and it’s a site you should know and bookmark.

The site listed several places in the South Bay I could take my tapes to for recycling.  It turned out that many self storage businesses in the area offered GreenSpot Drop Off services that would take the tapes.

But it wasn’t exactly that easy, because place after place that I called either didn’t know anything about the service or told me they didn’t offer it any more.

When I called U.S. Storage Centers right here in Redondo Beach, one of the locations listed on Earth 911, the woman who answered the phone said she didn’t know anything about it, but she gave me the manager’s email address to check with her.

Just 15 minutes after I emailed Stephanie, the U.S. Storage Center Property Manager, I got her reply that they did indeed accept VHS tapes for recycling and I loaded up the CRV for a second run and was over there in a flash.  Bam!  Just like that those 7 cartons were unloaded and wheeled away on a flatbed dolly to recycle land.

21 cartons of stuff just taking up space in my personal environment now responsibly gone and I couldn’t be happier about it or stop talking about it to everyone I know.  Sure, some of my pals give me a funny look over my enthusiasm for this project, but I know they’re really envious.

And now YOU know how to achieve your space reclamation and recycling dream and I hope you’ll use Earth 911 and your city’s free recycling programs to experience the same ecstasy I’m still basking in.  Just tell them the Greenius sent you.