I have a milk-crate of hazardous waste on the back porch right now.
At least 90% of this hoard came to me through no fault of my own; it was just hanging around the basement of my old house when I bought it in 2003 and I’m still trying to get rid of it.
There are two bottles of Carbona Spot Remover, which is do-it-at-home dry cleaning fluid. There’s a story in some Southern Gothic novel about a little girl who bursts into flames at a bar-b-que because her fastidious mother had over-enthusiastically treated her dress with this stuff.
There’s about half a pound of “ACME” brand chlordane dust. I can’t imagine this is good stuff to keep around.
Sinclair insecticide. I’m pretty sure this is a quart of DDT. There are three of them.
Active Ingredients 100%
“P. D. has a pleasant odor. It does not stain.”
Your money’s worth or your money back.”
The crown jewel of the box-o-tox is this vintage bottle of mange treatment. It appears to be intended for human use, as there’s a note on the back of the bottle advising the purchaser to consult enclosed directions for animal use:
One of the active ingredients in Glover’s Imperial Sarcoptic Mange medicine is tar oil, and that is the top note in this particular noxious bouquet.
The Byzantine and mutable schedules of the Household Hazardous Waste collection sites have been thwarting me and my desultory attempts to rid myself of this shit for actual years now. Granted, I will admit that I haven’t been strongly driven to get rid of this fine vintage collection of solvents, poisons, paints, and potions. In part because of the whole “out-of-sight, out-of-mind” factor, but mostly because it is a basic pain in the ass to get rid of the Hazardous Wastes via legal channels.
The drop site near my old house is open “Thu., Fri. and Sat., 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Appointment required.” Yeah. Right. I have tried to make appointments three times, and the first two times I couldn’t get through to a live person, a the third, I got through, but they didn’t have staff available for the day I had free to schlep poison to the East Bottoms. They didn’t used to require an appointment, but there was also nobody there when went out there. Believe me, I tried every time I went to drop off recycling for about two years. I’d load up the old Jetta with glass and plastic and phone books and my crate-of-volatile-liquids, drop off all of the recyclables, and
Now, you could theoretically arrange to meet somebody there to take possession of your poison, but in actuality and reality there’s still nobody there to accept your hazardous waste.
The drop site near where I live now is open “Third Saturday of the month (April-Oct.), 8:30 a.m -1 p.m.” so that ship has already sailed.
It becomes strikingly difficult to conduct yourself in the manner of a responsible, law-abiding citizen in this atmosphere and I am more than half tempted to take this box of chemical warfare up to the drop site near my old house and just leave it on their doorstep.
I’ve had the same problem with disposal of toxic goo. Seems that the county toxic goo collection site only accepts the stuff a few times a year, and never when it’s actually convenient for me. My solution is to dump the stuff — after dark — on the grounds of the local Gestapo Swine….erh, I mean police….. station. The way I see it, the local Gestapo are immune to toxic substances, seeing as how they capable of devouring tons of donuts, and other toxic chemical laden snack “foods”, not ill effect. I’m sure they’d use the Carbona as coffee creamer.