Time to take your nasty chemical waste to the dump
By Erin Perkins
Grand Forks City Council wants resident to think before they dump during a week-long awareness campaign about pesticides disposal, Wednesday, Oct. 17 to Wednesday, Oct. 24.
“It’s very bad to dump pesticides in the garbage because you can contaminate the environment with those chemicals,” said Grand Forks councilor Gary Smith. “We don’t want the stuff in our landfills. It has to be properly disposed of. We don’t want people pouring it down their sinks.”
Smith started the campaign in conjunction with the annual nation-wide collection of agricultural pesticides waste by Clean Farms this month. The collection depot for agricultural waste is Advanced Nursery. As a pesticide consultant, he didn’t realize that domestic pesticides could be taken to the local landfill. So he began this campaign so others would also know where to take their chemical waste.
The chemicals are collected at the landfill in Grand Forks and are then removed by Product Care, a non-profit organization that manages product stewardship programs for a variety of organizations across Canada. By diverting the leftover and end-of-life products from landfills, Product Care protects the environment while also recycling and reusing those leftover products.
The harsher industrial chemicals are often destroyed in a high temperature furnace.
For a list of local landfill and collection locations as well as hours of operation go to: http://www.rdkb.com/Services/EnvironmentalServices/ResidualsGarbage.aspx. Besides pesticides, the RDKB also accepts leftover paint, sealants and residual fuels.
For more information about Product Care visit their site at www.productcare.org.
