Household Hazardous Waste satellite collections

If you live in Clark County, there are many opportunities to properly dispose of any hazardous waste from your household. (herbicides, pesticides, toxic cleaning products, paint, etc.) You can take it to any one of the three transfer stations (West Van, CTR or Washougal.) Or, if none of those are convenient, you can view the list of 2011 HHW satellite collections and find the one that is closest to you.

I hope this helps you properly dispose of your HHW.  If you live outside of Clark County, I recommend doing a search for your area and HHW disposal. Most areas have at least one option for proper disposal.

Email me if you have any questions!

-The Reuser

Update: Sorry, I forgot to mention...the most important bit of all: If you'd like to start to eliminating the use of toxic materials in your home, there are tons of resources available for doing this. If you are using a cleaner, polish, etc and wonder whether there is a "greener" version of it, simply do an internet search. You might just be surprised what you learn.

Producer Responsibility for Fluorescents

We get asked about fluorescents on an almost daily basis. This announcement comes as great news for Washington State residents!

A bill creating a producer-funded recycling bill program for fluorescent lights, supported by WSRA and several other organizations, received final passage by the Washington State Legislature yesterday.

Compact fluorescent lights (CFLs) and fluorescent tube lights, which contain small amounts of mercury, will both be covered by the product stewardship program, which will begin by early 2013. Mercury is known to present threats to the environment and human health.

Curbside, mail-back and collection location options are all allowed in the program, which will be funded by manufacturers of lights sold in Washington, operated by an independent product stewardship organization and overseen by the Department of Ecology. Mail-back programs will be required to use vapor barrier packaging to contain the mercury if lights break during transport. Individual producers or groups of producers are allowed to set up their own collection and recycling programs, provided they adhere to the requirements of the new law, and those programs will also be overseen the Department of Ecology.


Steve McGonigal, Executive Director
WA State Recycling Association

More info about producer responsibility (aka Product Stewardship)

Dear Reuser #1

I've always wanted this blog to be a forum for answering questions from the public. Awhile ago, I got a few questions, but unfortunately got so swamped with work, I've been a bit behind with blog posts. Here's the first of what I hope to be many questions.

Dear Reuser,
I have a dead lightbulb and am wondering if I should throw it away or recycle it?

If the lightbulb is CFL(spiral) it needs to go to household hazardous waste (all flourescents contain a small amount of mercury to work and this can be recovered and used again if taken to the correct place.) If it's just a normal, standard bulb, you can just place this in your normal garbage. The glass that is used in incandescent light bulbs cannot be recycled with container glass-it's a different consistency and composition and can cause structural integrity issues in recycled glass containers. Therefore, it's best to just throw these away (at least for now.)