Solid Waste District’s 2016 Collection Season Begins May 21st

la-porte-solid-waste-district-logoThe La Porte County Solid Waste District's 2016 collection season will soon be underway, with an important change limiting the size of household hazardous waste containers that can be brought in for recycling.

The District’s first hazardous waste collection of the year will be held from 9 am to 2 p.m. May 21 at the La Porte County Fairgrounds, 2581 W. State Road 2 in La Porte. This collection is a 5-in-1 collection, where tires, appliances and electronics will also be accepted for recycling along with confidential document shredding. All these collections are free, except for tires, and are meant for residents only, no businesses.

The District’s hazardous waste collections will always be an easy and FREE way to get rid of chemicals, household cleaners, Sharps (medical needles) and other hazardous materials. However, in response to rising costs to process hazardous waste, limits have been set on the size of containers that can be accepted for recycling or disposal.

"We are still accepting everything we have traditionally accepted, but we are now only able to accept those items in containers that hold five gallons or less of materials," said Tom Buford, director of the Lake Michigan District Household Hazardous Waste program. "This thankfully shouldn't affect many of our residents because our program is only meant to collect hazardous waste from homes and most items we see at our collections are within this range."

The Hazardous Waste program used to have a contract with a company that was able to come toward the end of each hazardous waste collection to empty 55-gallon drums of oil and antifreeze, but Buford said this service has become too expensive. Everything now has to be emptied into recycling and disposal containers by hand, which necessitated the size limit of five gallons or less.

We'll have five more collections this year, with the next hazardous waste-only collection happening June 25 at the La Porte County Fairgrounds. Call us at (219) 326-0014, visit our website at solidwastedistrict.com or e-mail aebaugh@solidwastedistrict.com for more information!