Looking forward to the new year was not enough for some New Yorkers. First, they needed to shred the bad bits of 2010.

So on annual Good Riddance Day, members of the public were invited to jot down their least favourite moments and memories, then stuff the paper into a giant shredder set up at Times Square.

Big Apple resident Melissa Altman said she shredded “a name, a person I liked for a while, a person I just want to get rid of.”

“It’s the guy who didn’t know I existed,” another woman said, throwing her piece of paper into a bin, which then dumped its cargo into the truck-sized shredder.

Two cast members from the musical “American Idiot” tore up a note inscribed “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” referring to the recently overturned law that barred gays from serving openly in the military. That too went into the big shredder.

One woman said she had scribbled “California” on her paper.

Others had less grandiose grudges from 2010. “Inhibition, passive smoking and restless leg syndrome,” Seth Magee, a graphic artist, wrote on his paper.

Whether the high-tech voodoo works is one thing. But the shredder certainly shreds – and the shredded paper is recycled as toilet roll.

“You can trust me: None of these memories will ever be seen again once they enter this truck,” said organiser Lori Raimondo, with the Times Square Alliance.