Nelson hazardous waste recycling depot opens

You can now recycle your used motor oil, filters, oil cans, and antifreeze in Nelson six days per week.

And all that hazardous waste under your sink and in the your garage – various cleaning products, pesticides, and other questionable chemical compounds – the new Nelson Leafs hazardous waste recycling depot will take as well.

“This keeps it out of the sewers, out of the creek, out of being buried in the back yard,” says Leafs vice president Jeff Wright.

Two new sea containers have recently been installed at the Leafs bottle depot and recycling centre near Cottonwood Falls Park at 12o Silica St. where the hazardous material will be collected, then shipped out by Kelowna contractor Terrapure.

“It’s been a long time coming,” Wright said, “trying to co-ordinate two different levels of government [city and province)] and Terrapure.”

Until now, the only way to recycle the materials listed above was during the Regional District of Central Kootenay’s annual one-day roundup, an event that in the past few years has had to be shut down early because of the overwhelming number of customers.

At the new depot, people bringing in their hazardous waste won’t take it directly to the new sea containers. Staff inside the Leafs’ bottle depot will receive and sort it.

“There are five different categories of household waste, and under those five categories, there are 12 different breakdowns that we collect and separate,” says Greg St. George, the manager of the program, who explained that he and two other staff have been trained to sort it.

“If people have large loads, like a pickup truck, they should call ahead to make sure we have the staff to handle it,” he said.

The new depot, although run by the Nelson Leafs, is funded by the RDCK.

“This is the first eco-depot for us,” says RDCK resource recovery technician Travis Barrington.

“This type of facility is in demand throughout the district,” he says, “and we would like to have more of them, so it is ongoing program for us that we are going to keep working on.”

For many years the Leafs depot has already collected a number of other waste products for recycling: paint (20,000 cans in the past year), light bulbs (12,500), fluorescent tubes (45,000 feet), household batteries (3.36 tonnes), small appliances and microwaves (27.8 tonnes) and various household electronics (104.3 tonnes).

Oil and hazardous chemicals have been the big gap until now.

The new depot is open Monday through Saturday, 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

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bill.metcalfe@nelsonstar.com Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter

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