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Category Archives: Hazardous Waste

What You Need to Know About Household Hazardous Waste

If you are like most homeowners, you have all sorts of junk scattered around your home. It is easy to let things accumulate in the basement, attic or backyard. Junk King is here to to haul away just about every piece of junk from your property. Though we have the manpower and equipment available to haul away the vast majority of your items, we do not accept certain types of household hazardous waste. Let’s take a look at the dangers of household hazardous waste and explain why you should be careful when removing these items from your property.

Why Junk King Hauls it all but for Household Hazardous Waste

Our mission is to haul all types of junk unless it has the potential to cause a fire or create an environmental hazard. If you have an old mattress, table, furniture, yard debris or just about anything else, we will show up to your property and haul it away. However, we draw the line at certain household hazardous waste items. For safety and health reasons we do not remove hazardous items like biological waste and asbestos. The bottom line is that if the federal government bars us from removing the items we will abide by their rules.

What-You-Need-to-Know-About-Household-Hazardous-Waste-Junk-King-Marin-CAWhat is Household Hazardous Waste?

Household hazardous waste is often referred to as “home generated special materials” materials or “retail hazardous waste”. This broad term includes an array of consumer products that have the potential to harm the environment if disposed of in an improper manner. It also includes household chemicals, pest control sprays and automotive care products. Each of these products has dangerous characteristics as a result of their ignitability, reactivity, toxicity or corrosivity. Other common examples of household hazardous waste include oil paint, latex paint, drain cleaner, fuel, antifreeze, motor oil, herbicides, poisons, pesticides, cleaning chemicals and rodenticides.

How to Dispose of the Household Hazardous Waste That Junk King is not Allowed to Take

Do your best to keep hazardous waste items in their original containers until you can find an appropriate location for their proper disposal. Read the label of each potentially hazardous item to gain a full understanding of the manufacturer’s recommended disposal instructions. Even if the label simply directs you to bring the item to a specific recycling site or warns of improper handling procedures, it is still worth reading. These directions will help you avoid injury and prevent unnecessary environmental harm. Do not combine your leftover hazardous waste with other products. Some household hazardous waste items like fluorescent lamps and batteries can be brought back to the retail stores where they were purchased.

Junk King is Here to Help

If you are unsure as to whether one of your household items is eligible to be picked up by our junk hauling crew, do not hesitate to reach out to us for more information. Our junk removal experts will let you know if we can pick up those items or if they are considered to be household hazardous waste that must be disposed of in a special manner or location. As long as the federal government permits us to pick up the item and it is not dangerous to handle, we will haul it away. Reach out to us today for more information by dialing 1-888-888-JUNK (5865) or by filling out our convenient online contact form.

Laws on the Disposal of Chemical Waste

If you’ve been keeping up with the news you know all about the recent spill along the Colorado River. This is definitely a teachable lesson and a reminder that the responsibility of disposing of chemical waste is a shared one.

What is Chemical Waste Anyway? 

Chemical waste – sometimes called industrial waste – is waste produced by mixing potentially harmful chemicals together. Various chemical solvents, paints, paper products and heavy metals might all be classified as chemical waste by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

In fact, the regulation of chemical waste is a joint effort between the Environmental Protection Agency, Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) as well as state and local governments. This makes sense in light of the fact that different states have different liabilities – as the example above with the Colorado River, unfortunately, illustrates.

It might surprise you to hear that OSHA is also involved in the oversight of chemical waste, but that also makes sense given that a lot of chemical waste is produced in commercial factories. As an example, a paint mixing facility or pharmaceutical lab might have to deal with an OSHA regulator and comply with local regulations as well.

Chemical Waste and Hazardous Waste 

There’s even more strict regulation when it comes to chemical waste that’s also hazardous waste – mainly because, if left unattended to and unregulated, hazardous waste poses a greater environmental and public health threat.

Now, going back to those venn diagrams in high school, we could say that all hazardous waste is chemical waste but that not all chemical waste is hazardous waste. If, however, chemical waste is hazardous waste then it has the following properties: toxicity, reactivity, corrosively and ignitability.

  • Hazardous Waste

Just from the sound of some of these words – ignitability, reactivity, etc. – you can get a sense of why responsibly disposing of these kinds of industrial byproducts is to the public good, and maybe good for your blood pressure numbers too.

In fact, a lot of chemical waste can’t even be recycled. Instead it will be, in the case of glassware from labs, stowed in plastic-protected boxes and deposited at a landfill. Because of the increased threat posed by hazardous waste, the EPA has urged state regulators to create their own hazardous waste disposal programs.

Although it doesn’t necessarily make for intriguing beach reading, you can find more about how hazardous waste like PCBs and dioxins are categorized and regulated, both federally and locally, here. There are even rules that states need to follow for safe disposal in landfills – found here.

  • Medical Waste

Another area in which sensitivity is definitely the order of the day is with medical waste. With medical waste, or other kinds of potentially hazardous waste, the waste is collected from clinics, hospitals and laboratories, then processed. Processing usually means that the waste is burned in an incinerator, made inert through chemistry, preserved in formalin or heavily disinfected with bleach.

  • Universal Waste

The EPA also regulates chemical waste that it’s categorized as universal waste. Universal waste are household items like batteries and lightbulbs as well as mercury-containing electronics and certain pesticides you may have sitting around.

You can find the EPA’s more comprehensive list of standards for universal waste management here, and discover more about how federal legislation interacts with your state’s regulations on chemical waste here.

The fact is that disposing of universal waste is everyone’s responsibility since universal waste comes from materials that are commonly sold and widely available in retail stores – hence the name universal waste.

Contact Junk-King Marin today if you need universal, e-waste safely disposed.

 

What You Need to Know About Household Hazardous Waste

What You Need to Know About Household Hazardous Waste Junk King MarinThe Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill in 2010 exposed the dangers of industrial hazardous waste. That said, many people still don’t know all the facts about household hazardous waste lurking in and around their homes. Here’s what you need to know:

Facts about Household Hazardous Waste 

Household hazardous waste, if you’re like the average American, is accumulating in your home as you read this blog.

Scope of the Problem 

That’s because most people have a collective one hundred pounds or more of hazardous waste in their garages, sheds, closets and basements. This is a big problem and it’s not going away without a fight.

In fact, Americans generate upwards of 1.5 million tons of household hazardous waste annually, and that number is growing as more waste sources are identified and the population continues to grow.

So where the heck does this waste come from and why is it so harmful – hazardous, if you will – for the people who ignore the problem and the environment that suffers the consequences?

Sources of Household Hazardous Waste 

The answer is that household hazardous waste, as you may have guessed based on where it resides in the home (garages, closets, etc.), takes the form of household cleaners, battery acid, wall paint and common pesticides.

Car batteries and automative fluids can also accumulate in garages over time and pose significant health risk and environmental dangers.

As with most problems, though, the first step you can take to combat the problem is to identify the problem in the first place: forewarned is forearmed.

Identifying Household Hazardous Waste 

People are probably already most familiar with the skull-and-crossbones symbol denoting poisonous (a.k.a., toxic) materials. These could include household cleaners that also happen to be a household hazardous waste source.

Household hazardous waste may also be labelled as flammable, corrosive or reactive (see symbols in link below).

  • Flammable

Flammable hazardous waste (e.g., paint thinner or gasoline) is really a double whammy for homeowners in terms of liability – it ignites easily and burns rapidly.

This means that you’ll want to have any product labelled with the flammable hazardous waste symbol quickly disposed of and kept away from heaters and other fire sources around your home.

  • Corrosive

Corrosive hazardous waste might be the scariest type of household hazardous waste on this list because this type of hazardous waste has the potential to do some real damage if it comes into contact with your skin.

That’s because the “corrosive” part of corrosive household hazardous waste means that this type of waste can cause your skin to literally disintegrate. If that’s not scary enough, corrosive hazardous waste (e.g., bleach and battery acid) can also eat away at storage materials or part of your home as well.

Consider safely disposing corrosive household hazardous waste right away. Corrosive hazardous waste might be lurking in your yard, garage or storage closet right now so it’s important to deal with the problem before it gets out of hand.

  • Reactive

Reactive, or explosive, household hazardous waste is usually labelled in a way that sometimes throws people off – it shows a chemical reaction or explosion outward. Compared to the skull-and-crossbones symbol this is harder to quickly take in.

The dangers of reactive household hazardous waste, though, are very real. Reactive household hazardous waste can come in the form of any product that mixes bleach and ammonia in a way that could trigger a chemical reaction.

  • Toxic

Toxic, also known as poisonous, household hazardous waste comes in the form of pesticides and expired medicines. Having these around your home could be dangerous. Contact Jung King-Marin to get it handled today.

 

Junk King Marin
851 Irwin St. #214
San Rafael, CA 94901
Hours: M-Sa: 8A-4P

Providing junk removal services to the Marin area, including:

Amer Cyn
Angwin
Corte Madera
Fairfax
Kentfield
Larkspur
Mill Valley
Monte Rio
Napa
Novato
Petaluma
Rohnert Park
San Anselmo
San Quentin
San Rafael
Santa Rosa
Sausalito
Vallejo
and these nearby zip codes:
94503, 94508, 94558, 94559, 94581, 94589, 94590, 94591, 94592, 94901, 94903, 94904, 94912, 94913, 94914, 94915, 94925, 94926, 94927, 94928, 94930, 94939, 94941, 94942, 94945, 94947, 94948, 94949, 94952, 94953, 94954, 94955, 94960, 94964, 94965, 94966, 94974, 94975, 94976, 94977, 94978, 94979, 94998, 94999, 95401, 95402, 95403, 95404, 95405, 95406, 95407, 95409, 95462, 95486