Golden Triangle Landfill hosts hazardous waste disposal day
GOLDEN TRIANGLE, Miss. (WCBI) – You probably didn’t know that many of your everyday household products and cleaning supplies are technically hazardous waste materials.
“We will accept pesticides, herbicides, all kinds of chemicals, cleaning chemicals. People say I don’t have any hazardous waste. well, if you look under your kitchen sink you do because if you’ve got draino and that kind of product those are technically hazardous,” said Jimmy Sloan, the Executive director of the Golden Triangle Solid Waste Management Authority.
This means they have to be disposed of in certain ways. That is where the Golden Triangle Landfill comes in.
Every spring, they host a Household Hazardous Waste Collection Day, allowing citizens to bring those hazardous materials in.
Sloan said these items are not like everyday trash.
“The landfills are built to protect the groundwater and that is why they have liners in them so things don’t leak into the groundwater and it’s obvious you don’t want it in the groundwater because that is where we get our drinking water,” Sloan said.
He explained there are specific ways to dispose of each item. For example, chemicals…
“We hire a company out of Purvis Mississippi Complete Environmental and they come in and set up and they’ll bring 10 or 15 people and they’ll take all the chemicals. If it doesn’t have a label, they’ll test it to see if it’s an acid or a base and they package all the acids together and all the bases together and all the fluorescent light blubs together, and all of those types of items. They will ship it based on what it is to wherever it goes,” Sloan said.
Other products like tires and electronics also have their own precautions.
Sloan said they want to give citizens a place to take hazardous waste.
“We try to do it right that is what this event is about doing it right. Allowing all the citizens a place to be able to get rid of their waste,” Sloan said.
The collection day is at the Golden Triangle Landfill on Old West Point Road in Clay County on Saturday from 9 a.m. until 2 p.m.