Cayuga County Solid Waste Management Program Office

Overview of Cayuga County's Household Hazardous Waste Program

Summary

The tenth anniversary of Cayuga County's first Household Hazardous Waste (HHW) Event is October of 2007. It seems like a good time to re-cap how and why the County started sponsoring HHW events, plus summarize our results to date.

I will be adding to this column from time to time during 2007.

Bruce R. Natale, P.E.
Environmental Engineer
Cayuga County Department of
Planning and Economic Development

Cayuga County's Typical Year Includes Three Events:

April or May: Earth Week (EW) Event

Normally runs from 9 to Noon in late April or early May. Recent targeted items include home electronics (lead), old propane tanks (fire safety) and fluorescent bulbs (mercury). No appointments necessary, but don't come early or you'll be in a long line!

May or June: Tire Collection Event

We hold this in mid to late Spring to try to beat the first mosquitoe hatch. We have size limits because our markets won't take some items. Generally we accepted all car tires and pick-up truck tires, either on rims or off rims okay.

September or October: Household Hazardous Waste Event

This is our big chemical collection for all Auburn and Cayuga County residents. Get your leftover pool chemicals, garden and lawn poisons, paint thinners and your old gas/oil mixes out of your house and garage before winter. Normally, we also collect home electronics, old propane tanks and fluorescent bulbs. You must call for an appointment for this event ... To be SAFE, we need to space out the traffic and have a smooth flow in and out of the event ... By having appointments we handled over 550 cars in 5 hours in October 2007. That's nearly 2 cars unloaded every minute! Our longest line at the entrance was 12 or 14 cars, and our longest wait was about 5 minutes. That is why you need an appointment and that is why you need to try your best to arrive on time. (Believe it or not, someone actually came at 3:10 PM on 10/13/07, when the last appointment was at 1 PM ...).


Cayuga County's First Hazardous Waste Events

During the years we were trying to build support to hold our first HHW event, Cayuga County staff found 100% grant funding to hold a similar event, an agricultural chemical collection event known as a Clean Sweep. So, the County's first hazardous waste event was not the 1997 HHW day, but our 1996 Clean Sweep event. After successfully implementing Clean Sweep 1996, the County Legislature authorized the local contribution to hold our first HHW event the following year.

Then, after holding HHW events every other fall, we decided to try a spring Earth Week event in 2002 (EW02). The special targets for that event were all of the propane grill tanks that became obsolete starting April 1, 2002 due to fire safety issues (What's an OPD?).

Cayuga County HHW Events
  1. CS96: Clean Sweep, November 7, 1996
  2. HHW97: Household Hazardous Waste, October 25, 1997
  3. HHW99: Household Hazardous Waste, October 16, 1999
  4. HHW01: Household Hazardous Waste, September 29, 2001
  5. EW02: Electronics and Propane Tanks, April 27, 2002
  6. CS02: Clean Sweep, October 30 and 31, 2002
  7. EW03: Electronics and Propane Tanks, April 26, 2003
  8. HHW03: Household Hazardous Waste, October 4, 2003
  9. CS03: Clean Sweep, November 18 and 19, 2003
  10. EW04: Electronics and Propane Tanks, May 1, 2004
  11. HHW05 Spring: Household Hazardous Waste, May 7, 2005
  12. HHW05 Fall: Household Hazardous Waste, October 15, 2005
  13. EW06: Electronics and Propane Tanks, April 29, 2006
  14. HHW06: Household Hazardous Waste, October 14, 2006
  15. EW07: Electronics, Propane Tanks and Fluorescent Bulbs, May 19, 2007
  16. HHW07: Household Hazardous Waste, October 13, 2007
In addition to our HHW events, we have also sponsored recycling events, particularly for tires, as follows:

  1. Tires03: July 12, 2003
  2. Tires04: May 22, 2004
  3. Tires05: May 14, 2005
  4. Tires06: June 3, 2006
  5. Tires07: June 16, 2007
In all, we've safely removed over 1,300 drums of chemicals, over 158,000 pounds of electronics and 43,000 tires from our community. See the Past Programs page for more specific statistics.

Back to the Index

Updated Oct 25, 2007

Return to the Cayuga County Website
Return to the Cayuga County Department of Planning and Economic Development Website