A Hazardous Waste Adventure

I've had a burned out compact fluorescent light bulb sitting in my garage for at least a couple years now. For those of you in Arcata, compact fluorescent bulbs are considered hazardous waste and have to be disposed of as such.

I also had about 40 to 50 pounds of old lawn fertilizer to get rid of- some weed and feed, the rest just plain fertilizer. I decided to take them in to the City Garbage hazardous waste facility on West Hawthorn Street in Eureka today.

I expected this to be an interesting trip, never having been through the hazardous waste facility yet. Turned out it was pretty much a non- event.

You drive in there the same way you go in to the recycling center. You continue past the recycling center and take a left to go around the hazardous waste building. The entrance is on the south side. I blew it because I thought you were supposed to go in where you're actually supposed to exit from the facility. When I noticed my mistake, I swung left and that had me going wrong way into the exit from the recycling center. Luckily no one was leaving the recycling center at the moment so, no harm, no foul.

You get to the entrance of hazardous waste and there's an electronic gate, just like they have at the garbage facility. They open the gate and guide me forward their unloading spot. It had two speed bumps at each end. You park right there. I guess that's important because you can minimize contamination from spills if unloading is all done in one place.

On the left was the gal that takes your info. She asked what my zip code was first, to make sure I was from Eureka, I guess. I then started to get out and explain what I had in the back of my truck and she quickly told me to stay in my car. I guess that's a big thing there. You're supposed to stay in your car. They take the waste out themselves.

I still had to get out of the truck to get money out of my pocket. She didn't seem to like it but what else could she do? By the time I started, once again, to explain what I had in the five gallon buckets, they'd already removed them from the back of the truck and taken them into the building. I gave the gal five bucks- that's standard fee for Eureka residents for up to 15 gallons or 150 pounds- and away I went.

Kind of a nice, efficient operation they have there but I was hoping it would of been a little more interesting than that. Here's info on the hazardous waste disposal if anyone is interested.

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As an aside, I was surprised to see how busy City Garbage's recycling center was today. You'd think with mandatory curbside recycling being forced on so many people, business at the recycling center would of slowed down a bit. It was all clogged up when I was there with only two parking spaces open.