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Kosciusko County Solid Waste Management District voted to allow municipalities to shred their documents during free shred events and to allow other towns in the county to hold shred events in their communities.
The topic came up during the board’s meeting Tuesday because Syracuse and several small towns asked if KCSWMD would consider doing a shred event at their locations.
Tom Ganser, executive director of Kosciusko County Solid Waste Management District and KC Recycling, told the board labor is the primary concern.
He said, “I’ll secure the service for whatever time you want it, but then labor is going to be on you.”
He suggested they could use volunteers. Winona Lake Town Councilman Barry Andrew, board member, suggested possibly using drug court or reentry court volunteer hours.
Warsaw Mayor Jeff Grose brought up the concern of liability. He was concerned about unvetted volunteers handling potentially sensitive materials. Scott Reust, Solid Waste Management’s attorney, responded legally there would be a degree of implied consent to supersede liability.
The board determined documents are taken directly to be lifted and shredded into the truck while supervised by the person dropping off the documents, so there was a very minor chance of documents being mishandled.
County Auditor Alyssa Schmucker asked whether local municipalities would be able to have their documents shredded as well.
Ganser said their free events thus far were only open to residents. They had rejected allowing any businesses to bring their documents to their free paper shred days.
County Commissioner Cary Groninger said, “I think there’s a difference between local governments and businesses. I wouldn’t have an issue with opening it up to allow them to bring their documents to be shredded. Definitely not businesses though.”
Groninger's comment was echoed by the rest of the board.
In other business:
• Shred Day will be from noon to 3 p.m. Wednesday, April 15 at KC Recycling Depot, 220 S. Union St., Warsaw.
• The board approved a request to buy 10 collapsible gaylords for remote collection. These will be used with vendors like Better World Books, who pick up and dispose of materials collected by KC Recycling. The total price will be $4,400 plus shipping.
• Reust said the property that was sold to Wawasee School Corporation does not need to be included as a Solid Waste asset because it is not their property. They have the receipts showing they sold the property. Because the district has not filed the paperwork indicating it has changed ownership, it is not as clean for accounting, but the Solid Waste Management and the board has done everything required of them.
• KC Recycling will be at Taste of Agriculture, an event organized by the Purdue Extension, on Tuesday, April 14. They will be participating in the Earth Day Festival in Syracuse on Saturday, May 2.
• KC Recycling will be reopening applications for part-time warehouse employee. They had 70 initial applications. They made two employment offers, which were both rejected for personal reasons.
• Ganser reported they are already seeing an increase in drop-offs at KC Recycling with the nicer weather. In February, they shipped a full shipment of antifreeze, electronics and sharps. Additionally, Better World Books picked up twice, and 10,000 pounds of latex and 3,000 pounds of oil were disposed of.
KC Recycling already has funds set aside to assist towns in holding clean up days. They would be able to provide dumpsters for electronics disposal, cardboard and general trash.
