Rounding up household hazardous waste
Most people know better than to dump leftover pesticides into a running stream, but, if they want to get rid of the stuff, few options are appealing. If they pour it down the sink, water sources and wastewater treatment plants can become contaminated. If they pack it in with their garbage, it heads to a landfill where it can leach into the groundwater.
To keep those scenarios from becoming reality, cities and counties have been building household hazardous waste (HHW) collection and reuse programs. “There are probably thousands of programs set up [to collect household hazardous waste] around the country, and I think the awareness over the last five or six years has increased significantly,” says John Skinner, executive director of the Solid Waste Association of North America. “The most prevalent system is a drop-off system where, for a couple of days a year, maybe once every quarter, a city or county will have an area where people can bring their waste materials. They'll have specialists there to take [the materials] away and handle them properly.”
Some communities have gone a few steps beyond periodic collection events and have built permanent collection facilities, sent out trucks to collect materials from remote or homebound residents, and invested in education to try to keep residents from producing hazardous waste. The following cities and counties provide examples of the more than 3,000 HHW collection programs across the country.
Morris County, N.J.
(population 470,212)
An early adopter of HHW collection days, the Morris County, N.J., Municipal Utilities Authority (MCMUA) has spent nearly 17 years organizing quarterly collection events that allow residents to drop off unused dangerous materials. “New Jersey did kind of get a reputation for being the Toxic State and has worked very hard, especially over the last 15 years, to reverse that,” says Laura Macpherson, MCMUA hazardous waste coordinator. “It's almost like it's a wound for a lot of us. We want to make sure that New Jersey is also [known as] the Garden State.”
With attendance and demand steadily increasing at the events, the MCMUA decided in 1998 to construct a $400,000 permanent HHW collection facility. The facility, which is situated near one of the county's two transfer stations, is open year round and collects materials by appointment on Fridays and Saturday mornings. One of three HHW facilities in the state, it is funded by tipping fees at transfer stations and accepts most hazardous materials from Morris County residents free of charge. In 2000, combined with biannual collection days, the facility collected 232,520 pounds of HHW.
Along with regular HHW, Morris County began accepting computers and color televisions two years ago. So far, more than 12 tons of used consumer electronics has been collected by the program. The MCMUA charges residents $3 per component or $5 for a computer and a monitor. The fee helps the MCMUA pay its contractor to demanufacture or refurbish the materials. “We're not in the business to make money, but we are imposing a fee to let the residents know that there is a cost associated with these items,” Macpherson says. “They aren't cheap to get rid of.”
The MCMUA also has begun charging $5 for residents to bring propane cylinders to the permanent facility and collection events. The site has been receiving cylinders recently because of a new code issued by the Quincy, Mass.-based National Fire Protection Association that requires all cylinders to have an overfill protection device by April. While older model cylinders can be retrofitted with the protection device, many residents are choosing to get rid of old cylinders instead. “They really aren't hazardous unless someone is trying to empty them and a spark should ignite the propane,” Macpherson says. “They just take up a lot of space, and we're getting a lot of them.”
With an annual budget of $350,000, the MCMUA includes educational outreach programs to encourage residents to reduce the amount of HHW they produce and to bring their materials to collection events or the facility. Besides having a staff member who visits schools, the program distributes newsletters and flyers and runs announcements on public service television stations. It also sets up booths at fairs and festivals in the county.
Additionally, for 14 years, the MCMUA has been organizing an annual recycling awards dinner to honor individuals and businesses for outstanding participation in recycling or hazardous waste management programs. Award recipients are nominated, and the county researches each nominee to choose the winners. “It's really wonderful for these individuals, who normally wouldn't get recognized, to be rewarded for working to protect the environment,” Macpherson says.
Summit County, Ohio
(population 542,899)
In October 1994, the Summit County, Ohio, Solid Waste Management Authority (SWMA) organized its first collection of hazardous residential materials. The response was overwhelming. In two days, 4,000 cars drove through the collection site, each loaded with approximately 80 pounds of material. “[We] ended up having to shut the gates. There were cars everywhere,” says James Skora, director of the SWMA.
Paint made up more than half of the material collected at the event, so the county organized another collection exclusively for residential paint. Five locations were set up in the county to collect paint for three weeks, and people in 9,000 cars dropped off partially filled cans. Because of the tremendous turnout at the collections, the county decided to look harder at the problem of HHW. Residents obviously had plenty of it in their homes, and they had a need to get rid of it.
The county purchased land for a permanent HHW collection facility, and a local lumber store, Carter Lumber, built the facility, which opened in April 1996. The building is open for residents Tuesday afternoons and Wednesday evenings from April through September. Residents in outlying communities also can drop off materials at satellite sites. “The last two years have been record years,” Skora says. “This past year, we had over 10,400 [residents] participate.”
More than 40 percent of those residents were first-time participants who typically brought cars full of material. That volume helped keep the county's HHW program costs low. Since the facility opened, the agency has reduced its per-user costs from $56 to $47.
The program is in its seventh year, and residents still bring in plenty of reusable materials, such as full cans of paint, half-empty aerosol cans, unopened containers of antifreeze and shoe polish. “Our biggest concern is getting folks to realize that they're just throwing money away when they bring us a $25 can of paint that's never been opened,” Skora says. “There's some serious money being thrown away in household hazardous waste. We tell people to buy what you need, use it, and only get rid of the empty containers. Don't just get rid of it because you have a convenient way to get rid of it now.”
Kansas City, Mo.
(population 441,545)
The Regional Household Hazardous Waste Program in Kansas City held its first HHW collection in 1994, attracting 4,000 residents in just two days. Because of the high participation level, program organizers decided that residents needed a more permanent way to dispose of their chemicals. The program designed a 3,500-square-foot facility to handle 425,000 pounds of HHW a year, and it got a state grant to partially fund its $1.4 million construction in 1995. The program has been so successful that, this year, it collected close to one million pounds of HHW, requiring an expansion of the collection facility.
Five full-time staff members manage the facility, which accepts material from 1.2 million residents in five counties — Clay, Platte, Ray, Cass and Jackson — three days a week. All drop-offs are scheduled by appointment to keep the drop-off process orderly and to keep residents safe.
“If you happen to be bringing in some latex paint that you just finished painting your house with, you probably don't want to be here at the same time as somebody bringing in sodium cyanide that grandpa had in the basement when he died,” says Bill Lewry, environmental manager for the Regional Household Hazardous Waste Program. Before [all residents scheduled appointments], we had a drive-up lane and an appointment lane, and we had about one reportable incident per week.” Those incidents included exposure to chemicals, complaints of dizziness and spills.
In addition to operating the permanent facility, the program has a smaller collection facility 30 miles away that is open one day a month for five months each year. The program also organizes approximately 30 mobile collection events from April through November. Twice a year, the program includes announcements about the facilities in water bills. The inserts list the materials residents can bring to the facilities and give them a phone number to call for more information.
When residents call the phone number, a secretary screens the materials the callers want to drop off and suggests alternatives to bringing the materials to the facility. Some local automotive shops, for example, can accept used motor oil and may be close to the residents' homes. Also, the secretary diverts computer components to a local private company that dismantles and refurbishes them.
“We reckon that, to deal with computers, we'd have to be able to handle about 1.2 to 1.4 million units a year,” Lewry says. “That's just for the metropolitan area if you count the Kansas and Missouri sides. We applied for two state grants this year [to handle computers], but we did not get them because, even though [the state] recognizes the need, we would have swallowed up [its] entire grant allocation.”
The HHW collection services are funded by taxes levied by the 41 cities and counties that participate in the program. When the facility first opened, it cost $135 per car to process materials. Now, it costs $40 per car. The program has managed to increase the amount of material it can handle while keeping the tax steady. It has done that by using reusable containers for shipping and packaging and by processing some materials in-house instead of sending them to an off-site contractor.
For example, instead of paying a contractor to process used motor oil, the program installed a used oil-fired furnace and air conditioner at the permanent facility. Now, all the used motor oil brought by residents is used to heat and cool the building. The program also has begun recycling about 65 percent of residents' latex paint in-house and donating it for local Habitat for Humanity projects or to low-income residents. “Each drum used to cost us about $165 to dispose of, and now we make about $50 a drum,” Lewry says. “We don't charge for the paint, just for the cost of the container.”
San Luis Obispo County, Calif.
(population 246,681)
San Luis Obispo County formed a regional agency — the Integrated Waste Management Authority (IWMA) — to manage recycling and HHW collection for the county and the six cities within it in 1994. In 1995, IWMA began its HHW program with a one-day collection event at four sites. After that collection, the agency began holding monthly events. While residential participation at the events was encouraging, the agency was discouraged that the collections cost so much — $142 per car — to organize.
Also, because the events were held just once a month, some HHW was falling through the cracks. “If someone would call and say, ‘We're moving in a week, what do we do [with our chemicals]?’ It's not a great answer to say, ‘Wait until next month for our next temporary event,’” says Bill Worrell, manager of the IWMA. “Because you know what they're going to do, and it's not good.”
In 1999, the IWMA received a state grant to build two permanent collection facilities, serving approximately 75,000 people each. Subsequently, the agency has received additional state grants to build two more similar facilities and three smaller facilities to serve communities of about 5,000 people each.
Currently, three facilities are open; two of them are located at privately owned landfills, and the other at a wastewater treatment plant. They collect materials every Saturday, and the county's central facility also collects materials on Fridays.
The facilities in San Luis Obispo each cost approximately $70,000 to construct. They are 10-foot-by-40-foot modular units set on 40-foot-by-60-foot concrete pads.
Each of the facilities includes an oil/paint can crusher, a storage building and a 500-gallon oil tank. The facilities are staffed by landfill personnel at no cost to the IWMA. In return, the landfills can send any HHW to the facilities.
In addition to operating the permanent facilities, the agency charges $50 to pick up HHW from residents who cannot bring materials to the facilities. Also, it provides residents with oil containers and oil filter bags for storage of used motor oil and disposal in free curbside collection.
Along with sending regular mailings to residents, the IWMA advertises its HHW collection services with an ad in the yellow pages and with information on its Web site. Additionally, two years ago, the agency sponsored television commercials created by local high school film classes. IWMA gave the classes $1,000 to create television commercials about the HHW program. The six ads, which run on local stations, educate residents about HHW and provide a phone number to call for more information.
The agency saves money on its processing costs by running a reuse program. While the agency does not allow residents to take donated materials from the collection facilities, it distributes collected pesticides to licensed pesticide application companies and all pool chemicals to local pool maintenance companies. Additionally, all of the latex paint brought to the facility is given to a local paint manufacturer for reprocessing.
“Our general feeling is that we would prefer not to give [materials] to the public because of the liability issues,” Worrell says. “If we're giving [people] malathion (a pesticide), we want to know that they are properly trained to use it.”
In September, California declared that computer monitors and televisions were hazardous waste, so the IWMA began collecting those materials at its facilities. For now, the agency's primary HHW contractor handles the components, but it charges up to $25 per monitor. “Our biggest challenge is going to be computer monitors and TVs,” Worrell says. “They are incredibly expensive to accept, and there are so many of them out there. Our facilities really weren't designed to handle those.”
Despite the high cost of computer disposal, the agency has been able to keep its per-user costs down while collecting a large amount of HHW. In the two years the permanent facilities have been open, the IWMA has served 4,689 users and has collected 337,695 pounds of material. By having low-cost facilities and its reuse program, the agency has reduced its costs per user from $142 to $38. This year, the agency won the Program Excellence Award from the Seattle-based North American Hazardous Materials Management Association because of its low cost facilities.
Whether local governments organize regional collection events twice a year or take appointments for drop-offs every weekend, they try to strike a balance between providing a cost-effective service and removing as much HHW from the waste stream as possible. Some cities and counties have found that permanent collection facilities, ranging from relatively small modular units to large million-dollar buildings, help strike that balance.
Common to all HHW management programs are the principles of education and convenient collection opportunities. Telephone hotlines, displays at community festivals, newsletters and television commercials are several ways to educate residents about the problems associated with HHW and the importance of proper disposal.
What products are hazardous?
Automotive materials: gasoline, motor oil, antifreeze, windshield wiper fluid, car wax and cleaners, lead-acid batteries, brake fluid, transmission fluid
Home improvement materials: paint, varnish, stain, paint thinner, paint stripper, caulk, adhesives
Pesticides: insecticide and insect repellent, weed killer, rat and mouse poison, pet spray and dip, flea collars, mothballs, disinfectant, wood preservative
Household cleaners: furniture polish and wax, drain opener, oven cleaner, tub and tile cleaner, toilet bowl cleaner, spot remover, bleach, ammonia
Other: household batteries, cosmetics, pool chemicals, shoe polish, lighter fluid, prescription medicines, arts and crafts materials
From the University of Missouri Household Hazardous Waste Project. For more information, visit outreach.missouri.edu/owm/index.html.
