OLD cans of paint, half-empty hairspray bottles and a drawer full of dead alkaline batteries: It's the sort of clutter that's easy to hoard, but hard to get rid of without harming the environment.
For the type of trash officially dubbed household hazardous waste, disposal isn't as simple as a trash can or even a blue bin. In fact, hazardous waste -- everything from nail polish remover to antifreeze -- contains potentially dangerous chemicals that can leach into soil and groundwater, which means dumping old products down the drain is also a bad idea.
Paul Leonard, customer service manager of Miller Environmental Corp. accepts household hazardous waste at the free drop-off location on Hekla Avenue.
For Manitobans determined to dispose of hazardous waste safely, there is an option: a free drop-off depot that has partnered with the province for roughly 15 years.
"People who come here are generally pretty conscientious," said Paul Leonard, customer service manager at Miller Environmental Corporation on Hekla Avenue, off Keewatin Street.
The waste management company takes in the toxic trash lurking in the closets, garages and medicine cabinets of Manitobans. On a recent visit, the facility was piled high with old bottles of motor oil, wood polish and plenty of paint cans, which are the most common type of waste Miller receives.
At the depot, which moved to its new location from Fort Garry in May, hazardous waste is divided into groups and stored in a heated, explosion-proof building. Later, the waste is packed up in 1,000-litre boxes and sent off for recycling or safe disposal.
Batteries can be disposed of without harming the environment at a hazardous waste drop-off depot.
Despite the program's appeal, participation levels have traditionally been on the low side. That's worrisome to local environmental groups, who say part of the problem is limited access to the facility.
Drop-offs are allowed only on the first Saturday of the month during the fall and winter, although appointments can now be made for Wednesdays and Thursdays with an online booking service at www.greenmanitoba.ca.
"If you have a small amount of waste, you're not going to go there," said Carolyn Garlich, who serves on the policy committees for Resource Conservation Manitoba and the Council of Women of Winnipeg. "The only people who are going there generally are people who are moving, or cleaning out a basement, and are going there with quite a bit of stuff in a vehicle."
While a total of 6,250 vehicles visited waste drop-offs last year, the province has no current statistics on what percentage of household hazardous waste is collected safely, or how many Manitobans use the service.
As recently as five years ago, just 21 per cent of hazardous waste from Manitoba homes was being kept out of landfills, according to Resource Conservation Manitoba.
"Given that this is some of the nastiest stuff that ends up in the landfill, that's not really a good level of performance for a system," said RCM executive director Randall McQuaker.
The current system for managing the dangerous waste is set to change to a new, product stewardship model in the new year, said Jim Ferguson, waste reduction co-ordinator for the government branch Green Manitoba.
The agency recently wrapped up a call for public comments on the plan. It aims to put the onus on industry to take care of the waste it produces, with the hope of offering better access to hazardous waste facilities for Manitobans.
"What they want is a permanent collection system, where there'd be more ongoing opportunities to drop off, and certainly more sites rurally for that collection system," Ferguson said. Currently, the province runs a little over a dozen rural collection days each year.
McQuaker said RCM is happy about the planned overhaul, but concerned about what the group believes is vaguely-worded draft legislation that might not guarantee easier access for Manitobans.
There are other points of contention, like the possibility of an "eco-fee" approach that could see customers pay an extra fee when they buy hazardous products, money that would be used to dispose of the waste safely.
There's no word yet on whether the eco-fee system would be put into place for household hazardous waste, or for electronic waste, which is also undergoing a collection overhaul. But it has been the model chosen for similar programs, like tire recycling, McQuaker said.
He said the eco-fees would be an improvement over current practices, but would not encourage companies to make products that are easier to recycle or less toxic.
"Tacking this onto the charge to the consumer, I think, lets manufacturers off the hook," McQuaker said. "It kind of misses an opportunity to take the program up to another level."
He said RCM would also like to see more of a focus on cutting back on the amount of hazardous trash in homes. Manitobans are "not going to solve all problems with more waste-capture programs," McQuaker said.
"We need to be reducing the amount of waste that we generate in the first place."
lindsey.wiebe@freepress.mb.ca
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