Recycling & Waste

2018 Community Shred Day- April 21, 2018

2018 Update: Due to a lack of volunteers, we expect wait times to be significant this year. Anyone who arrives before 8:30am will not be permitted to line up. We also ask that you remain patient with the volunteers who are there to assist you. If you do not want to spend your Saturday morning waiting in line to shred, there is a KGW Shred Event on April 27, or we encourage you patronize local businesses like the UPS Store and Postal Annex for your shredding needs.

The City will be hosting Community Shred Day on April 21, 2018 at Yakima (formerly the West End Building, 4101 Kruse Way). The event will run from 9am-12pm or until the shred trucks ARE FULL. Please help us by not showing up for this event excessively early and creating traffic backups on surrounding streets.

This event is sponsored by the Youth Leadership Council. They will be collecting voluntary donations for their attendance at the 2019 National League of Cities Conference in Washington DC. Please be kind to the youth who are at volunteering on a Saturday morning to assist you.

This is a very busy and labor intensive event. We will need volunteers to help take shredding from cars and keep traffic moving during this event! Please contact Jenny Slepian at jslepian@lakeoswego.city if you would like to help. We will provide fluorescent vests for all volunteers- please bring sturdy work gloves as paper cuts and even worse, cardboard cuts, are a very real possibility.

*This event is open to Lake Oswego residents, and those within the urban services boundary only. Volunteers will ask for ID and/or zip codes to confirm your residency.*

Please help us minimize traffic snarls and ensure that everyone gets the opportunity to shred their documents by following the mandatory guidelines:

• You may only bring 2 shopping bags (or 1 bankers box) of shredding. By shopping bag, we mean brown paper shopping bag. We will not be accepting trunkloads full of paper. A large plastic garbage bag full of paper is too much. We will turn you away if you bring more than is allowed. Please ensure that others get their opportunity to shred by obeying this guideline.
• Follow all traffic rules and obey the instructions given to you by Lake Oswego Police. For safety reasons, no walk ups are allowed.
• You may not park your car and walk up with your bags of shredding, dump them on the ground, and walk away. This is a secure shredding event and we will not be held responsible for papers that are left for volunteers to attend to when they get the opportunity. This event is being held on private property, not City owned property, so any documents left on the ground will be recycled as part of the normal clean up process, but not securely shredded.
• Please respect the volunteers who have given their Saturday morning to assist with this event. Offensive language towards volunteers will not be tolerated.
• Be patient. This event attracts a great number of people, can create traffic and long lines, and is limited by the speed at which the trucks can shred each bin. If you do not want to wait, then please take your shredding to the UPS Store or the Postal Annex, where they will happily shred your documents for you in a timely manner.
• The event will end when the trucks are full. Again, the event will end when the trucks are full. This may be before noon. We will not accept any documents and traffic will be directed away from the site once the trucks are full. Please do not attempt to drop off documents or ask to "squeeze in one more bag". When the trucks are full, they are full.
• DO NOT BRING YOUR GARBAGE!! In recent years this has become a real problem. This is a paper only event- not an excuse to clean out the trash in your car.
• We would like to thank Yakima for allowing us to host this event on their property.

More details about Shred Day will be posted shortly, and they will also be advertised in HelloLO and the Lake Oswego Review. Please direct any questions to Jenny Slepian at 503-635-0291 or jslepian@lakeoswego.city. Thank you in advance for helping us make this a positive and successful event.

All Lake Oswego households had a countertop pail delivered to them. If you are new to the area and do not have a pail, please contact Republic Services at 503-636-3011 to request one.