Faced with clearing the garage and workshop of a recently-died relative, there are a lot of unidentifiable chemicals in all sorts of glass and plastic receptacles.
Rather than trying to identify them all, I thought to simply dispose of them.
Question, therefore, --- can one put sealed bottles into the dometic trash?
That probably depends upon whether or not your local waste disposal operatives check what you have in the bin/bag before loading it on the lorry. :-) There is a risk that the contents might be sprayed out of the back of the lorry when the bottles break or burst during compaction, so it is not something that is encouraged.
No, I think is the corrct answer, but if the question is prefaced by can I get away with it, then I think you might be able to if you are clever, but I'd not do it on principal. Brian
I agree with you Adrian (3 times). Our local tip is outstanding. Although I've met operatives at other (tbf, busier) local tips where they're less helpful -- you could get a blank "can't take that here".
[But has this thread leaked out from somewhere else? OP used the phrase "domestic trash", and another respondent talked about "garbage" and "garbage truck". :-| ]
Have you no clue at all of what they might be? Weedkillers or pesticides? Did they do electroplating, or a lot of metalwork? Or a lot of DIY? Do any of them have "solvent" type smells?
A simple way to dispose of the more volatile solvents is to leave the lid off, or perhaps put them (somewhere safe) in a container such as a polythene or galvanised bucket to evaporate. This is how I dispose of dirty white spirit (using an old flip-top bin). Most of the common "smelly" organic solvents can be mixed safely although remember that some are inflammable.
Not completely ideal if they include obsolete chlorinated hydrocarbons, but a reasonable pragmatic solution for small quantities.
For most common acids and alkalies it should be safe and environmentally acceptable to flush them down a (foul) drain with plenty of excess water. Do them one at a time!
Weedkillers and pesticides are more difficult. Again, for modest quantities the "least worst" option is probably the sewer.
I would be quite interested to know how the typical tip would treat a mixed collection of unlabelled bottles of chemicals. The posters who say "the tip will know what to do" *might* be correct, I think it is more likely that they have a pragmatic rather than a rigorous scientific procedure to follow.
It is worth taking a look see if some of them are useful chemicals or solvents. Be very careful if the former owner worked with glass etch or stainless steel since you might find yourself face to face with HF acid or dangerous fluoride based fluxes. The safety film causes casualties!
I once picked up a fragile 5L container of what I thought was pink paraffin label facing away form me in a greenhouse that was 40% HF sold in Belgium as "glass cleaner". I put it down again very very carefully.
No it is a *very* bad idea!
Your local council waste site will have a facility that should include waste solvents, pesticides and chemicals. Take them there and they will be disposed of properly as hazardous waste.
Seriously though if you are dealing with unknowns and unlabelled stuff treat it all as potentially hazardous and wear eye protection and stout rubber gloves. For HF then you really want a full face shield as well.
I like to have the antidote to hand when working with HF. Many labs these days will not permit its use unless there is no alternative.
A stout plastic box with a decent lid is a reasonable way to carry them in a car. You want any spillages and vapours escaping to be contained.
The fact that they're not labelled inicates s/he didn't work with these in a safe manner, and quite likely didn't make safe choices either. And if the y weren't young a far wider range of chems is likely than could be bought t oday. So who knows what might be there, ether, chloroform, carbon tet, stro ng acids, HF, copper arsenate, DDT, who knows.
A single simple test can identify what type of chemical you have in many ca ses. Dip cotton bud in chem, place on paper with red cabbage juice on it. J uice colour indicates pH, spot drying time indicates volatility. Thus this detects acids, alkalis, bases & volatile solvents.
There are bound to be people out there that want whatever it is. Uniting th e 2 I can see being quite issueful, but might be doable once you've done th e above test.
It usually means that black biro ink fades and label adhesive decays and they fall to the ground. After a couple of decades in a garage wasps can remove paper labels from bottles almost entirely.
I prefer pH indicator paper available cheaply on eBay or more expensively at garden centres for fish keeping.
Probably not worth the effort. Keeping any useful solvents acids or bases that you might use yourself in the future is fair game.
One other thing of note if you do have to dilute strong acids or bases for safe disposal always add the acid slowly to a large bucket of water stirring the water up first. Stop if the mixture gets steaming hot.
Doing it the wrong way round can result in serious injury as the resulting mixture of water into strong mineral acid can flash boil.
which indicates poor practice. I always mark bottles with waterproof pen as well, and labels should be checked & when necessary renewed every so many years. Dry substances also get a paper slip inside with their name on.
Excellent points about HF and concentrated sulphuric acid.
Perhaps also worth mentioning Picric Acid, if he was a metallurgist.
If there is a chance that more exotic chemicals (like HF or picric acid) are there, I'm not sure I'd be confident that the tip could handle them safely. But it should be possible to make some judgements if you can find anyone who knows what the guy used to get up to.
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