The Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation will bring its mobile hazardous household waste collection service to DeKalb County Saturday.
DeKalb County Public Works Director Brian Reed said the collection service is a great opportunity for people who have hazardous household waste such as chemicals, pesticides, and automotive and marine products. Reed said the collection event is one of the few opportunities people in the Upper Cumberland have to properly dispose of hazardous household waste.
“You know, unless your county has a facility that is a permanent facility set up for that collection,” Reed said. “You can’t get rid of them outside of that. Now Putnam County has a collection site set up, but if you don’t live in Putnam County, they will not allow you to dump because they have to pay for all of that theirself.”
Reed said it is important to properly dispose of hazardous waste. Reed said throwing away hazardous waste with everyday garbage can cause many problems for the environment.
“A lot of it is the chemical composition of them,” Reed said. “When you are starting to get that potentially mixing in with your ground water and stuff like that, even though the landfills are lined, you still could have some seepage and things of that nature. You know, some of them are flammable and things of that nature as well, so that’s another issue.”
Reed said that disposing of hazardous waste is very expensive. Reed said the collection service TDEC is providing is free and is going to be very beneficial to the county
“The county doesn’t have to pay for it,” Reed said. “The only thing we are out is our labor for setting up the event. The state pays for the disposal of that, so we don’t have to handle any of that either, so that’s a very nice benefit to it as well.”
The collection event will run from 8am-12pm on Saturday at the DeKalb County Complex in Smithville.
