Does your house need a new coat of paint?
Or maybe your garage is so full with paint and other chemicals from summer and fall projects that you can’t even get the car inside anymore.
Consider a visit to Snohomish County’s Household Hazardous Waste drop-off center in downtown Everett.
The center, located a few blocks southwest of the Everett transit station at 3434 McDougall Ave., accepts a number of items officials don’t want to see dumped in landfills, and provides them free to people who need them.
Items include latex- and oil-based paints and related products, household cleaners, automotive and hobby chemicals, garden and pool chemicals, batteries, mercury thermometers and even used fluorescent light bulbs.
Tom Suffridge of Everett recently took in several cans of paint.
"I found this stuff in the garage when we moved, and you can’t just take it to the dump," he said.
Center technician Barb Stork agreed that’s certainly true for liquid latex paint.
But she noted that once latex paint has hardened, it’s no longer considered a hazard and can be disposed of like ordinary trash. Oil-based paints, however, must be treated with care regardless of their condition.
Suffridge is typical of the people who drop off products. Most are moving to new homes, Stork said. Center manager Dave Shea added that it’s better for everyone involved when a seller brings in household hazardous waste instead of leaving it for the next occupants.
Stork lined Suffridge’s paint cans up on a wheeled cart and took them into the processing area, where other county employees and supervised work-release prisoners would later check each can of paint for condition and color and blend those that pass muster in 55 gallon drums.
Employees empty the drums into the 15-gallon plastic buckets that can be found in the center’s small swap shop as needed.
"Our paint tends to be nice and thick. So it gives good coverage," Shea said.
The oil-based paints are blended with other petroleum products, such as motor oil, and reprocessed on site for use as a small engine fuel blend.
Using a bio-filter that relies on bacteria to digest carbon dioxide, the center blends the fuel without releasing toxic emissions into the air.
Shea said people who want to reduce the cost of home improvement and who don’t mind using leftovers can save money and help protect the environment by supporting the center’s recycling effort.
A small warehouse room on the center’s east side acts as a kind of swap-meet shop. Pallets holding the stacked buckets of blended latex paint take up most of the floor space. Metal shelves and rolling carts along the walls hold smaller cans of paint and other household products left in good enough condition to be used by someone else: herbicides and pesticides, fertilizer, paint remover, cleaners, full propane canisters — the selection varies widely from day to day.
In addition, the small room displays pamphlets and signs with information about other waste collection sites throughout the county, tips for reducing the amount of waste a household produces, recipes for nonhazardous cleaners, and related topics.
The center’s staff of about six processes everything that’s dropped off before putting anything into the shop. In addition to blending the petroleum products and paint, the staff bundles mercury-containing used fluorescent light bulbs for recycling and crushes most paint cans for scrap metal.
Shea said the goals are to minimize waste and see that hazardous waste gets safe disposal.
"About 85 percent to 87 percent of what we get is recycled or reused," Shea said. "That’s good, but I would like to see us reach the 90s."
By volume, the center on McDougall Ave. and partner centers throughout the county, including Schuck’s Auto Supply stores, recycles more motor oil than anything else — some 200,000 gallons a year are reclaimed in the county, Shea said. Collecting the motor oil doesn’t cost the county, and earns some money, he added.
That helps pay for the center’s most popular reuse item — the latex paint. The center now distributes about 30,000 gallons of remixed latex a year, Shea said. That number is up significantly since its first operating year, 1999.
"It’s growing every year," Shea said. "We used to advertise. Now it’s just word of mouth."
Shea and his staff also encourage customers to take plenty with them, since they can never be assured of finding more of an exact shade on later visits.
Dan Supplee of Mukilteo stopped by the center two weeks ago, looking for a light shade of paint.
"I just need a little paint, and someone told me about this place," he said. "I have a little trailer I’m making into a shop."
He didn’t find anything light enough that day, but said he might come back. Supplee also recommended checking "oops" bins at local paint and home improvement stores: new, custom-mixed paints that weren’t quite what particular customers had in mind.
Everett resident Lisa Rockafellow and her family recently used paint from the center to help redo their house’s exterior and touch up its interior for a faster sale.
"It was a huge help," Rockafellow said. "We only had a little money to work with."
The Rockafellow family also found some of the necessary painting supplies at the hazardous waste drop-off center, and a liquidation center just down the street sells tools and other household supplies.
Kristin Fetters-Walp is a Lake Stevens freelance writer.
JUSTIN BEST
/ The Herald
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
