9/30/09 Nine bottles of vile chemicals, properly recycled at a cost of $40Today marks the end of month two of the Downsizing Challenge. I'm one-sixth of the way through the year. (And more than three-quarters of the way through the stuff I want to get rid of - yikes!)
To mark this day, I decided to undertake a doozy. When we moved into this house almost exactly six years ago, the thoughtful Zipkin family left us a gift: a whole bunch of antifreeze and pool chemicals, much of it half-buried in the woods. Thanks, folks, we appreciate it.
Unsurprisingly, this stuff is not easy to get rid of. In fact, it took quite a bit of research and searching to figure out the place I was supposed to take it. The repository (at least temporarily) for such goodies is an outfit in South Portland called Clean Harbors Environmental Services. In addition to the time and gas one must burn to get down there, they charge $6.50 per gallon to take most anything yucky.
The guy cut me a deal by only charging me $40.
In my brief conversation with him, I learned that Clean Harbors is a serious operation. I think he said that they have facilities in fourteen countries, and it's pretty clear that they'll take almost anything off your hands. He emphasized that EVERYTHING gets recycled, and, to illustrate his point, he listed off a whole bunch stuff (most with the word "acid" in them) that I'd never even heard of. The Zipkins' - uh, I mean my - chemicals would be heading to Texas, where they would be broken down and, somehow, reused. Miraculous, really.
What's not so miraculous is that we've gotten ourselves into this situation where we have to pay more to get rid of chemicals than it costs to buy them. At $6.50 a gallon and an hour's worth of driving, I tend to suspect that a whole lot of people are going to decide that proper disposal is out of reach.
I'll even admit that the idea of dumping the crap in the woods crossed my mind. More than once.
But, my better nature prevailed, and it was a glorious sight to drive away from those bottles after tripping over them for six years.
Of course, for me, $40 was an acceptable price, swept up, as I am, in this year-long journey. Still, it gives me pause to think that doing the right thing is both so time-consuming and expensive. Plus, I know that other equally nasty liquids lurk in my basement.
I better start saving up.
Interesting post...it would be nice to think that people would consider the high cost of hazardous waste disposal at the point of purchase and only buy what was needed. Then all the paint/stain/cleaner/hydrofluoric acid is applied or used, and nothing additional sits around to be dealt with. The added bonus, of course, is that more accurate demand leads to more accurate supply, and thus we are only manufacturing what we use. In the light of the new "sin tax" talk on sugared sodas, an interesting concept. Expensive chemical disposal is a sort of "back end" sin tax on buying too much.
ReplyDeleteOf course, that only works if we play by the rules. Dumping it all in the woods is certainly cheaper and easier in the short run...
--crm
Mr. M, you have added value to the conversation, as always. I love the supply side thinking. I should also add that the other problem with the woods dumping option is that it leads to rather dire consequences for all those feral kitties I mentioned in an earlier post.
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