Record numbers utilize hazardous waste collection day

WORLAND - The highest number of people participated in bringing items to the 2018 Washakie County R3 Coalition Ag and Household Hazardous Waste Collection Day Saturday at the Worland area landfill.

Washakie County Weed and Pest Supervisor Jarrod Glanz said, "We had by far more people than we've ever had." He added that with only a handful of volunteers, less than 20, it "made for a very long day."

Glanz said that in 2016, they had 74 vehicles come through the hazardous waste collection day dropping off pesticides, used paint, household chemicals, oil, batteries and more. This year there were more than 200 vehicles this time.

Glanz said he does not know what to attribute the increase in numbers. In an organizational meeting earlier this spring, Glanz had noted that while in theory it would assume the more collection days you have (they have held one every two years for many years) the less items you would collect but the opposite has been true.

Glanz said Brown's Western Appliance will be picking up the refrigerators and freezers, Yellowstone E-Waste of Billings will be collecting e-waste except the cell phones, which will be donated to the conservation district for their cell phones for soldiers program.

Clean Harbors out of Denver, Colorado, will be transporting the chemical waste. Glanz said they have set a preliminary budget for Clean Harbors of $15,000.

The landfill handles the recycling for the large batteries as they are accepted year-round. The landfill does not accept household batteries year-round.

"We had a lot of stuff, a lot of paint," Glanz said. He said they received an estimated 1,545 gallons of paint and recycled that into recycled 45 one-gallon buckets of paint.

The paint is available to people for free to pick up. Glanz said they strain old paint through screens to catch any particles. They then mix paint to make new and fun colors, seal the cans and they are then given away. This is only for the latex paints, he noted. The volunteers put a swab of the color on the lid.

With so few volunteers this year, Glanz said the volunteers stayed until 3 p.m. The collection itself went from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. with a safety training at 8 a.m. He said himself and six volunteers returned to the landfill at 6 a.m. this morning to finish up preparing the paint for recycling, finishing about noon.

Along with paint, the other large item people brought was oil, which Glanz noted the Washakie County Solid Waste Disposal District No. 1 accepts at the landfill year-round.

They received 2,640 cans of oil.

He said they had 2,200 pounds of dry pesticides, 16 55-gallon barrels of liquid pesticide.

In regard to the pesticide and chemical waste, Glanz noted they had so much that Clean Harbors has to return to get the rest because they did not have a large enough truck. There was an estimated budget of $15,000 for the chemicals. Glanz said they are probably over budget this year on expenses.

They also received 64 car batteries and numerous other batteries.

Glanz said, "The volunteers worked their tails off to get it done. I appreciate all their help. Without them wouldn't have been success that it was."

Nine different agencies in the county working together as the R3 (reduce, reuse and recycle) Coalition are again sponsoring the biannual Ag and Household Hazardous Waste Collection Day for Washakie County residents. The collection day has been going on for years and originally started out at the Weed and Pest. It was moved to the landfill about 10-12 years ago, Glanz said.

Nine agencies - Washakie County Weed and Pest, Washakie County Conservation District, Department of Homeland Security/Washakie County Emergency Management, Washakie County Solid Waste Disposal District, Washakie County Public Health, Worland Fire Department, Bureau of Land Management, Washakie County Ambulance Service and the University of Wyoming Washakie County Extension combined efforts to support the day either with financial support or in-kind and voluntary help.

So why do the agencies continue to offer the Household Hazardous Waste Collection Day - to keep off public lands or other improper areas of disposal, to keep out of the landfill, to ensure clean water and to "just try and do the right thing."