Hazardous Wastes at Home

With all the attention focused on the illegal dumping of toxic wastes by industrial producers, little notice has been paid to another more frequent source of illegal dumping: the home.

But now government officials in Orange County are beginning to look there, too. The point is not to catch and fine violators, but to educate them and help cut down the large amounts of hazardous materials being dumped in county landfills instead of licensed facilities.

Many people don’t realize that those old cans of paint and insecticide that they are tossing into the trash or the county dump is classified as hazardous--and that what they’re doing is illegal.

There is no licensed disposal site for hazardous waste in Orange County; it would cost an average family several hundred dollars to follow the law and call a licensed hazardous-waste hauler to pick up a can or two of old paint.

So the Orange County Board of Supervisors has approved a pilot project that will enable residents and businesses to take small amounts of toxic wastes to a central point where the county will collect it and pay for its legal disposal. It’s a needed program that should be run on a permanent basis, or until the costs of private pickup are within reason.

A countywide approach that includes central collection points and a consumer-education program are two positive ways in which the county can help control the indiscriminate dumping of household toxic wastes.