For 15 years, Comerica Bank has been helping both customers and the community keep their financial documents and sensitive information safe during their annual Shred Day.
This year, Shred Day took place on Saturday, June 15 at a brand-new location, Comerica’s newly opened Great Lakes Campus in Farmington Hills. Iron Mountain and Information Systems Resources provided the free document shredding and computer electronics recycling.
“We must remain highly vigilant regarding fraud and continue protecting ourselves from identity theft and potentially fraudulent activities pertaining to our sensitive and personal information,” said Steve Davis, Comerica’s Michigan Market President. “Recently, the Federal Trade Commission reported that consumers lost, for the first-time ever, more than $10 billion due to fraud last year.”
Shredding financial documents is paramount for protecting privacy and preventing identity theft. Exposure to sensitive personal and financial information, such as bank statements, credit card bills and tax returns can lead to cases of fraud.
Shredding these documents ensures that they are rendered unreadable and unrecoverable, making it impossible for unauthorized individuals to access sensitive information.
This year, 1,100 vehicles proceeded through the recycling lines at Comerica’s new operations office center—making this year car count the highest since 2019. Iron Mountain shredded approximately 169,000 pounds of paper marking an all-time high for Comerica’s Shred Day in the metro Detroit area.
Those vehicles included residents of Farmington Hills and surround areas, small business and nonprofit organizations.
In addition to the financial security component, Shred Day helped the environment by allowing guests to discard unused electronics.
Additionally, Comerica continued its long-standing fight to “shred” hunger by collecting non-perishable food donations to benefit Gleaners Community Food Bank, which supports Southeastern Michigan.
This year, Shred Day participants donated over 2,000 pounds of food and $4,400 in cash donations to Gleaners. This marked the fourth time since Gleaners became a Shred Day partner in 2013 that guests donated over 2,000 pounds of food during Shred Day. The cash donations ranked as the second-highest total donated since 2013, behind only 2022 totals that reached over $5300.
Shred Day did morph into Fed Day as Gleaners is matching every dollar donated 1-1 through the Hunger-Free Summer match campaign. With the Hunger-Free Summer match campaign, Comerica Metro Detroit Shred Day generated over 28,000 meals for the community.
According to Gleaners, the nonprofit organization provides food to more than 600 partner agencies, including schools, soup kitchens, food pantries, shelters, and others across the region, and supplements efforts of those partners by offering direct service drive-up grocery distributions. For every dollar donated, those funds generate three meals. Gleaners ensures 94 cents of every donated dollar goes to food and food programs.
“We are all very familiar with inflation just from experiencing it,” said Bob Irland, Community Giving Manager of Gleaners Community Food Bank of Southeastern Michigan. “But it also presents an opportunity to not only help the people we’re serving with their basic needs by providing food, which always comes first, but to also focus on the economic impact that comes along with that food assistance.”
Irland notes that most community members that come to Gleaners for assistance are working families. They may not use the services regularly but are able to access it for those times when there is “more month than there is money.”
“And then,” he said, “they’re able to use that as a launching pad for thriving in their families, in their workplaces, and in their communities.”
Irland recognized that the relationship between Gleaners and Comerica is a positive one.
“It’s really clear that Comerica recognizes that people are worth investing in, you see it from the Comerica employees come up and talk to us during shred day and how excited they are to partner with us,” said Irland.
He adds, “And Comerica has a long-term commitment to help solve hunger through events like Shred Day which gives us an opportunity to educate our community members about how combating hunger can help build stronger communities. It also reduces the stigma surrounding food insecurity– it’s not something to be ashamed of many people deal with it, regardless of outcome, or regardless of situation.”
About Post Author
