Ever wonder if the very chemicals we use to clean our homes is hazardous waste?

Ever wonder if the very chemicals we use to clean our homes is hazardous waste? We have been dealing with the waste industry for over 6 years and one of the things that we are passionate about is finding out people’s needs and helping them make an economical decision on dealing with their waste struggles.  We would also like to help put your worries at ease. Any consumer product that we purchase, inherit or what have you is never considered waste until we decide we don’t want or need it any more and we would like to dispose of it. Depending on the hazardous characteristics of the products, there are varying requirements for disposal of these items that make it harder and harder for home owners to just throw them away in the house hold garbage. Let us give you some suggestions for some examples of waste items that have become harder and harder to throw out for home and business owners.

* Latex Paints:

1. The best thing to do with this is obviously use it up as it’s intended purpose.
2. You can open the lids on the containers of the paint to allow it to dry out so that it becomes solid. If it is solid, it will meet the solid waste bureau’s requirements of solid waste and it can be accepted at Title D
   
   
   landfills.
3. If you know of any scrap wood, cardboard in large quantities that are getting hauled to the local dump, take your excess paint and paint it onto the wood or cardboard or even metal so that it can be used up as it’s original purpose.
4. There are various household hazardous waste HHW collection events that take place that will take things like latex or oil-based paints full of product or even ones that have lost the label and you don’t even know what they are. If you are interested in finding one of these events, let us know and we can find their locations and dates for you.

**NOTE** Any Title D landfill that takes residential waste will not accept any waste that is in liquid form because it does not meet the definition of a solid waste. Solid waste will not leak through a paint filter.

* Aerosol Cans:

1. Use it up for original purpose(spray till empty)
2. Empty aerosols can be taken to any metal salvage yards provided they do not contain any of the product inside of them.
3. Title D landfills can take them if they are empty, punctured so that they don’t contain the product or propellant that’s inside of them.
4. There are various household hazardous waste (HHW) collection events that take place that will take things like aerosol cans full of product or even ones that have lost the label and you don’t even know what they are. If you are interested in finding an event, let us know and we can find a location and date for you.

* Household cleaners:

1. Use them up as originally intended or find someone that is trying to clean that may not be able to afford these cleaning chemicals to help them out.
2. There are a number of Safety Data Sheets (SDS) resource websites that you can locate for each of your cleaning chemicals so that you know where they need to be taken for disposal options. Many SDS’s by law, are required to give guidance on disposal and transportation of each of these items. Stores like Home Depot offer a basic SDS search for household chemicals that they sell.  If you are having trouble finding this information, please let us know we would love to help you.

* Old batteries:

1. Once smaller batteries are spent, D batteries down to small watch batteries can be taken to various battery recycling centers.
2. Batteries from lantern up to automotive and large storage batteries; if they are intact and not broken open or leaking, can be taken to most metal salvage facilities for recycling.
3. If there are any damaged or leaking batteries, there are various chemical transport companies that can dispose of them for you.
4. HHW events are also able to accept used batteries that we all collect in our garages or storage sheds. Again, we can get you pointed in the right direction and also even handle the waste for you.

*  Fluorescent Light Bulbs or other various bulbs or ballasts:

1. Any fluorescent lights that have gone bad can be taken to stores like Home Depot to be recycled.
2. Waste Management offers a Lamp Tracker program where you order boxes of the size of bulbs that you use and the cost of the boxes pays for the box, transportation and recycling of the bulbs. Once you fill the boxes, you call a number on the box and they send a truck to get the boxes and haul them off for you.
3. HHW events will also accept items like bulbs, ballasts etc.
4. If you have any ballasts that have a label that states they do not contain PCB’s then they can either be thrown in the regular garbage or taken to any metal recyclers and recycled as steel.

There are so many different waste streams out there that we all deal with in our every day lives. Should you ever run into an issue with trying to recycle or dispose of something, please let us know. We want to make your life easier.