Newport, RI – To provide residents with more opportunities to properly recycle intact sensitive documents, Rhode Island Resource Recovery Corporation (Resource Recovery) will offer shredding services along with household hazardous waste collection at the September 29 Eco-Depot in Newport. The collection will be held at Easton’s Beach located at 175 Memorial Boulevard from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. This special event is available free of charge to Rhode Island residents only. To help reduce time spent in line, appointments should be made in advance for household hazard waste collection only. Appointments are not required for shredding.
Rhode Island residents who want to shred sensitive personal (i.e. not from a business) documents can bring up to two, 22-gallon recycling bins’ worth—free of charge. As a reminder, a sensitive or confidential document is one that contains a unique, identifying number that can be traced directly to a specific person, and which cannot be found readily through public searches. For example, a person’s name and address is not considered sensitive, confidential information. Note: once the shredding truck is full, we cannot accept further material for shredding. For this reason, shredding services are on a first come/first serve basis.
Created in 2001, the Eco-Depot program is a free service offered that provides for the proper handling, packaging, storage, transportation and disposal of household hazardous waste. Since its inception, Resource Recovery has collected approximately 11.9 million pounds of household hazardous waste and served more than 155,000 Rhode Islanders (and counting).
Many common household items are actually household hazardous waste materials that cannot be collected through Rhode Island’s standard trash and recycling collection services. Household hazardous waste is anything labeled with a skull and crossbones, or words like ‘toxic’, ‘poison’, ‘flammable’, ‘combustible’, etc. These materials include: fluorescent light bulbs, gasoline, pesticides, oil-based paints, disinfectants, used motor oil and lawn and pool chemicals. When not properly collected and disposed, these materials can cause harm to the local environment by contaminating Rhode Island’s waterways. For a full list of household hazardous waste materials, please visit www.ecodepotri.org.
In addition to household hazardous waste, properly prepared sharps (i.e. needles, lancets) are also accepted at Eco-Depot collections. For sharps to be accepted for disposal, they must be secured either in a sharps container or a puncture-proof plastic bleach, detergent or coffee container that is taped shut and labeled “SHARPS.” Sharps containers prepared in this method can also be disposed of with regular trash collection.
To make an appointment for the collection or to view the entire FY 19 Eco-Depot schedule, visitwww.ecodepotri.org or call 401-942-1430 x241.