Every home contains some hazardous waste; it's dangerous to you, your family, your house guests, your neighbors, and your pets. Dejunking your life and home of these hazards is a great gift to the safety and well-being of the people and animals you love.
Here's what to do:
1. Call your city or county sanitation department to ask where you can drop off household hazardous waste. There should be no fee for dropping it off at a safe collection site.
2. Schedule a time in your planner that works for you.
3. Line the trunk of your car with a tarp or flattened (clean) trash bags.
4. Line cardboard boxes or plastic storage bins with contractor trash bags. These are ultra heavy, black plastic bags that you can find in most grocery stores and hardware stores. (None of the waste spilled, but I took this precaution anyway.)
5. Wearing safety goggles and heavy gloves, put your waste inside the lined boxes and bins, and carry to your car trunk. Leave any liquids in their original containers to help waste site personnel identify the contents. Most sites, however, accept mystery waste. Better it end up at a safe collection center than at the landfill and leaching into our drinking water.
6. Drive to the collection site, and unload the waste. Wear goggles and gloves. Note that some sites may not allow you to exit your vehicle, but will require collection site personnel to unload the waste from your vehicle themselves.
7. Breathe a huge sigh of relief when you have disposed of these dangerous substances responsibly.
Here's what we hauled away to the collection site:
- fluorescent light bulbs
- C batteries
- mercury from a broken thermostat (found rolling around in beads all over the counter in my ex's shop)
- LCD monitor from an old computer
- keyboard
- hard drives
- two obsolete computers
- broken mini-DVD player
- gallons of paint we found when we moved into this house
- dangerous weed-killers and fertilizers we found when we moved into this house (I only use child- and pet-safe fertilizers on my plants and yard.)
- mineral oil
- AC adapters
- ancient fuel tanks from blow torches
- two old fire extinguishers
- a variety of wood stains
- spray paint (too many cans to count)
- car wax (Who does this? Drive through a car wash and get the wax sprayed on your car. Save 52 hours a YEAR and your manicure.)
- anti-freeze (I have a great auto shop and they take care of all my car maintenance.)
- windshied wiper fluid (Ditto.)
- mystery goo in an empty coffee can (dark colored like used motor oil, smelled like gasoline)
- many varieties of heavy equipment lubricants
- roof tar from our previous home, which we left over eight years ago
- spray adhesive
- spray-on ceiling texture
- brass polish
- lighter fluid
We completely filled my mid-size sedan's trunk and back seat floor with all this. I feel grateful that there is a safe place to dispose of these useless-to-me and potentially dangerous items.
The hazardous waste collection site also accepts unused medications. Don't dump expired medications down the drain or flush the pills. It's safer for pets and aquatic life if you take them to the hazardous waste collection site.
Make plans to find and visit the site in your neighborhood before the holidays. It's a healthy way to declutter for safety's sake!
