Household Hazardous Waste Guide
The paint, pesticides, pool chemicals and batteries in a garage are chemically identical to what a facility would have to manifest as hazardous waste. The difference is where they came from, not what they are. Here are 53 of them: what each one is, where it actually goes, and what it must never be mixed with. Eight are things a collection event will turn away, and knowing which ones saves you a wasted trip.
Can These Two Go Together?
Pick two things you have. This checks them against the incompatible waste groups in Appendix V to 40 CFR part 265, which is the list EPA publishes for exactly this question.
Find a Product
The Regulatory Picture
The household waste exclusion
Two things follow from this that surprise people. First, the exclusion is about the source, not the danger, so identical products are treated differently depending on who discarded them. Second, because it survives collection and treatment, a municipal collection program is not operating a hazardous waste facility merely by accepting this material.
States are free to be stricter than the federal rule, and many are. Several restrict landfilling electronics, mercury devices or lamps regardless of the federal exclusion.
Transporting it
That covers a resident driving material to a collection event. It does not cover what happens afterward. Once a program consolidates the material and ships it to a treatment or disposal facility, that shipment is subject to the normal hazardous materials requirements, which is why collection events are staffed by people packing to 49 CFR 173.12.
Universal waste: the five streams
Why these products would be hazardous from a business
A correction worth knowing
It is often said that a very small quantity generator can take its waste to a household hazardous waste collection facility as a federal matter. The conditions for exemption at 40 CFR 262.14 do not mention household collection facilities anywhere, and the former 40 CFR 261.5 that people sometimes cite no longer exists.
Where that route is available, it exists because the state authorized it, not because the federal rule provides it. If you are a business relying on this, confirm it with your state agency rather than assuming it applies.
Taking It In
Collection events are lab packing operations. The people sorting your material into drums are working to the same rules as any hazardous waste packer, so a few habits make their job safer and faster.
- Leave everything in its original labeled container. An unlabeled jug becomes an unknown, and unknowns cost more and get handled last.
- Never consolidate to save trips. Combining two products is how the dangerous reactions happen.
- Keep containers upright, and put them in a tray or box that will hold a leak.
- Keep acids away from bases, and keep oxidizers such as pool chlorine away from everything else, especially on the drive over.
- Transport in the trunk or bed, not the passenger compartment, and go straight there.
- If something is leaking, bag it and tell staff on arrival rather than leaving it in the pile.