Good Riddance Day: Plan Now to Say ‘Good Riddance’ to Your Worst Memory of 2017

New Year’s Eve celebrations are all about ‘ringing out the old and in with the new’.

Why not participate in Good Riddance Day this year... and shred the old?

Good Riddance Day is an annual event co-sponsored by the Times Square Alliance and information destruction services leader Shred-it. 

Shred-it parks a mobile shredding truck in Times Square, New York, and invites everyone to bring their worst memories of the year and watch them get permanently and securely shredded.

This year the 11^th annual Good Riddance Day is being held on December 28^th.  A few days later, Times Square hosts the famous New Year’s Eve party, which is attended by an estimated 1 million people and watched by billions around the world.  

The Good Riddance Day event is inspired by a Latin American tradition where New Year’s revelers stuffed objects representing bad memories into small dolls and then set them on fire to destroy them.

All the shredded material generated on Good Riddance Day will be sent to nearby recycling plants and turned into usable products. For every ton of paper shredded and recycled, Shred-it reports that 17 trees, 4,100 kilowatts of energy and 3.5 cubic yards of landfill space are saved.

Here are different ways to take part in Good Riddance Day this year.

• Go to the event. New Yorkers and city visitors are invited to the free event from noon to 1 p.m. Everyone is encouraged to bring a funny, outlandish or heartbreaking item on paper (old love letter, pink slip, income tax form), e-media or mobile device, and to have their unpleasant memories shredded and destroyed. Alternatively, the memory can be written down on paper and shredded in the mobile shredding truck.
• Enter the Good Riddance Day Contest. Explain what you’d like to say good riddance to and why in 500 words or less or in a video that is 90 seconds in length or less. The entrants will be judged by a panel made up of representatives from Shred-it and the Times Square Alliance. The winner of the contest will receive a 5-night trip to Good Riddance Day and the Official Times Square New Year’s Eve VIP Party. (Last year’s winner Arlene Roberts of California wanted to finally accept physical changes caused by chemotherapy treatments and breast cancer.)  
• If unable to attend in person, submit something online via shredit.com or Tweet @Shredit and use #GoodRiddanceDay on Twitter. The Times Square New Year’s Eve team will shred the item for you.
• Symbolically destroy memories. Collect old papers or digital records of private and confidential information – and have it securely destroyed elsewhere. Shred-it partners with many companies and organizations throughout the world providing a secure chain of custody for the destruction of paper and hard drives and e-media.

Good Riddance Day, concludes event organizers, is a great opportunity to ring in the New Year with a clean slate knowing unwanted memories of the past year have been securely destroyed forever.   

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