The City of Fulton will collect household hazardous waste and electronic waste (e-waste) at no cost from 2 - 6 p.m. Saturday at the Tennyson Road Fire Station.
Solid Waste Manager J.C. Miller said that an appointment must be made for all unused and harmful chemicals and unwanted electronics disposals and emphasized that it's imperative for citizens to remain in their vehicle until they receive instruction at the drop off site.
"We don't want anyone to be getting contaminated with anything," Miller said. "We have firefighters and people that's been trained and knows how to handle this. We don't need anybody else getting out and stepping into something, so we want to keep a clean work area and keep everybody safe."
He said collection days are only held on the second and fourth Saturdays of each month from April through October because not many people gather hazardous items during the winter months. Miller said offering disposal for eight months is more than enough time for citizens to find items they want to dispose of.
He said it's actually legal for citizens to throw hazardous items into their trash cans, but the goal of the collections is to prevent such items from being trashed to reduce potential environmental pollution or water issues in the future.
"This stuff isn't hazardous waste until it can no longer be used," Miller said. "As long as it can be recycled, it's still good. But once you dispose of it or you no longer use it, then it becomes a hazard."
The only e-waste items that will not be accepted are TVs because it costs too much for the city to dispose of them.
"We will accept anything that has a drop cord on it,"Miller said. He said if the city continued to collect them, its vendor would charge people between $20 - $40 to get rid of them, and he opposes people having to pay that fee. "I'm sure there will be a law passed in the future," Miller said. "But if they (citizens) wanna pay $40 to get rid of it, we can give the individual that's wanting to rid of their TV, we can give him our vendor's name and they can contact him and they'll come by and pick it up for him, and they can pay him the $40."
Miller said the waste items remain at the collection site depending on how long it takes to fill up a barrel of the hazardous waste item.
"We have to sort that stuff out into certain categories that everybody's been trained on how to do," Miller said, describing the collection process. "We have training every year on how our...like this is Clean Harbor that collects it this time. But they come in and show us how to sort this out, so we might acids in one barrel, we might have aerosols in another and as these barrels get full, we call them, they send a truck by, they pick it up."
According to the Solid Waste Department's services guide, the city may mix and reuse some items brought to the site, such as paint, antifreeze and motor oil.
To schedule an appointment to drop off unwanted hazardous waste and e-waste, citizens should call (573) 592-3150.