2001 Tox Away Day
2001 Tox Away Day 
Early morning, before the household hazardous waste collection begins.
These dozens of empty boxes will all be filled by mid-afternoon.
Trained hazardous waste handlers unload the vehicles. Materials are put on
carts for easy transport.
Materials are sorted by type of chemical. Paints were our biggest item
collected.
The first of many boxes filled with paint cans.
To avoid contaminating products that can be recycled, each chemical is sorted by
type.
Sometimes, it's not easy to figure out what a product is.
Lots of oil and other automotive fluids are collected.
Antifreeze and oil are emptied out of their individual containers, and poured
into larger drums for easier handling.
As barrels are filled, they are sealed to prevent spillage, and labeled.
They're held here until the end of the day, when they'll be loaded on trucks and
taken away.
By mid-day, we're already stacking the barrels to save space.
Cars were coming faster than we could sort the wastes. We placed the
containers on plastic, to prevent contaminating the parking lot if any of the
containers should spill or leak.
One more empty container bites the dust!
Break time! Fortunately, the weather was great, so neither the hazardous
waste crew nor the Master Gardener volunteers overheated.
Still trying to catch up on the backlog. We're beginning to accumulate a
lot of cardboard boxes that people used to carry their chemicals from home.
Cardboard is flattened, boxed, and loaded on the Posey County Solid Waste truck,
where it will be recycled.
