Collecting for the Earth
Residents line up to shred and recycle
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WARREN -- A sunny day and a desire to discard old papers drew about 200 people to the Tribune Chronicle for the annual document shredding and recycling day.
From the morning until the late afternoon, community members trickled in and out of the Tribune Chronicle's parking lot for the newspaper's celebration of Earth Day. At one point, the event caused a line of cars to back up along Vine Avenue.
Tribune staff that included veterans of the annual event, including general manager Ted Snyder and community events coordinator Sue Shafer, were out greeting people as they collected their recyclable items. While overall turnout was down from previous years, both said traffic flowed through steadily throughout the day.
Shafer said she enjoys going out and talking to the community members and seeing how appreciative they are.
"People stop by and say hello and just are trying to do their part to recycle and save the Earth," Shafer said. "They feel like when they're coming they're actually contributing to the environment and it makes them feel good and it makes us feel good. So it's just a feel good day."
Snyder said the yearly affair is done with help from two recycling companies, including Integrity Fiber, which is based in Akron. The company uses innovative and effective ways to reduce, reuse and repurpose resources.
"What's fun about doing it is just getting to see the people that bring this stuff down. I know a lot of the folks and it's nice to get to talk to them. They're appreciative that they can bring the stuff down in this one day and get it taken care of," Snyder said.
The event managed to gather up more than 6,000 pounds of documents that were shredded and filled up 13 48-by-40 boxes of recyclable paper material, including books, amassing about 10,000 pounds.
Those numbers were down from the previous year's total, which reached 8,200 pounds of paper shredded and an estimated 22,000 pounds of paper items recycled.
Some of the recycling money raised during the event goes toward funding the Tribune's Newspaper In Education program that provides teachers with newspapers to use for classroom activities.
Earth Day began on April 22, 1970, first as a day of education about the environment and then as a national activist movement in which some 20 million Americans -- at the time, about 10 percent of the population of the U.S. -- demonstrated against the negative environmental and health impacts of industrial development, according to earthday.org.
By 1990, Earth Day was a global movement and gave a boost to recycling worldwide. Today, it is estimated more than a billion people in more than 190 countries observe the day each year by recycling, picking up trash and planting trees.