At the parking lot of the Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall in Sarasota, cars drive in a single-file line through orange cones and park by a large truck belonging to A1 Shredding and Recycling Inc.
A group of volunteers wearing tie-dye shirts grab boxes of old paper from the trunks and backseats.
They dump the waste into trash bins. And when they’re full, the truck’s conveyer belt pulls them up to, very loudly, shred it all to pieces.
“I've come to multiple shred events. I'm a big shredder,” said Sarasota resident Christine Green. “I only brought maybe six or eight inches of paper, and I've taken, over the years, 12 file drawers or more.”
Green was in one of more than 250 vehicles which passed through the Van Wezel parking lot Saturday to drop off sensitive documents to be shredded.
Shred Stock is the city of Sarasota’s biannual event. This past weekend, they shredded five tons of paper, saving about 85 trees.
And, due to popular demand, outdated electronics were also collected to be wiped of any data before being destroyed.
Brandon Crisp, with the company Rocycle, gathered the old tech.
He said this is the most he's collected at any event.
"Usually, we're pretty slow with events, so I only bring three pallets. I filled all three pallets, and I'm overflowing now,” he said.
In the end, he had six pallets-worth of things like TVs, tablets and computers, with residents dropping off more than 3,000 pounds of electronics.
"All of this is an effort to not only keep Sarasota sustainable, as far as recycling all of our paper and electronic material, but also give the citizens of Sarasota an opportunity to protect themselves from fraud,” said Nick Dazio, who coordinates the event.
All participants received a 15% off coupon for The Nest Café, located in The Bay Park.
If you missed it, there's another Shred Stock planned for Nov. 7, 2026.
While you’re there, you can jam out to The Garbage-men, a local rock group which has headlined all three events so far, playing instruments made with objects found in the trash.
