Around 640 tons of household hazardous waste from homes across the state end up in landfills each year.
Lawmakers in the House Committee on Natural Resources, Fish and Wildlife voted unanimously Tuesday to support H.115, a bill that proposes a solution to that problem. Using funds from the manufacturers of the hazardous products, the legislation would create free opportunities for the public to dispose of household hazardous waste.
If the bill becomes law, it would require manufacturers to create and belong to “stewardship organizations,” which will collect household products containing a hazardous substance free of charge to the public.
Collection programs will cover “payment of collection, processing, and end-of-life management,” the legislation says.
Waste is considered hazardous if it is ignitable, corrosive, reactive or toxic. When released into the environment, that kind of waste “can contaminate air, groundwater, and surface waters, thereby posing a significant threat to the environment and public health,” the bill says.
Items with those characteristics — pesticides, aerosols, containers of oil or gasoline, for example — are already banned from landfills.
Municipal solid waste management entities are required to hold a minimum of two hazardous waste collection events each year, but those events are expensive, often costing in the realm of $1.6 million, according to the text of the bill.
Those costs, the bill says, are eventually passed down to people who need to get rid of household items.
All of this leads to hazardous waste in the landfill. Generally, there’s agreement among the waste management districts and state officials at the Agency of Natural Resources “that additional collection sites and educational and informational activities are necessary to capture more of the (household hazardous waste) being disposed of in landfills,” the bill says.
Under the proposed legislation, manufacturers will not be able to sell certain hazardous household products after Jan. 1, 2025, unless they are registered with a stewardship organization.
Stewardship organizations will be responsible for developing approved collection plans for all of the manufacturers that belong to it, issuing annual reports, conducting audits and registering with the Agency of Natural Resources.
The program will be a cost-saver for solid waste management entities,Michael O’Grady, deputy chief counsel of the Office of Legislative Counsel, told lawmakers.
Those organizations “are very invested in this program working, and working to be getting the stuff out of the landfill and getting it out of their waste streams,” he told members of the House Committee on Natural Resources, Fish and Wildlife on Tuesday.
