Comerica Bank hosts 5th annual Shred Day in Phoenix

PHOENIX, Ariz. (KSAZ) - Thousands of documents and sensitive materials were shredded over the weekend as part of Comerica's 5th annual Shred Day.

Comerica Bank, in partnership with Iron Mountain, St. Mary's Food Bank Alliance and Phoenix Police, hosts the Valley's largest free shredding event.

"It's the signature event that Comerica Bank does," said Steve Richins with Comerica Bank. "We do it in Dallas, Houston, Detroit and here in Phoenix each year and for the last five years we've done that, we've shredded nearly 400,000 pounds of documents."

Set up started before sunrise with streets being blocked up, so when it was time, cars funneled through. Even though the event is free, there is a way to give back, a donation to St. Mary's food bank.

"We're heading into our big turkey distribution, 11,000 families will be coming to St. Mary's in the 3 days before Thanksgiving so these events like this really help us not only from the food donations stand point but the cash donations that we receive from these types of events," said Jerry Brown with St. Mary's Food Alliance.

The other goal of the day is keeping your private information protected because identity theft is a growing problem.

"A lot of people don't realize that a lot of stuff that comes in the mail addressed to them has personally identifiable information on it, anything as simple as your name, address, last 4 digits of a credit card account, dates of birth, that all can be used by criminals," said Sgt. Armando Carbajal with Phoenix Police.

With no limit to how much you can shred, from a few documents to a truck load of paper, the free service is a real community cares effort.

"You can bring whatever you want, dump trucks whatever you've got you can bring everything here and they'll shred it for free so please remember St. Mary's when you do that," said Brown.