Wednesday, June 1st from 4:00 to 5:00 PM. All of us have it stored on shelves in our basements, garages, barns, out buildings, and other places–hazardous materials. Unused oil paint, old farm chemicals, toxic cleaners, burned out batteries and light bulbs.
In this one-hour webinar, we’ll learn what happens to those products after you take them to a local Cleansweeps collection. And, we’ll learn how to avoid even using hazardous materials by purchasing safe products instead.
The webinar is free and open to the public including members of households, farms, businesses, schools, and municipalities but pre-registration is required.
You can view a recording of this webinar on YouTube by following this link
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Renee Bashel is the Small Business Environmental Assistance Program Manager at the WI DNR’s Environmental Assistance Program in Madison. She will talk about how to read labels to see if something it harmful before it’s purchased. She specializes in helping businesses and farms reduce their wastes, but will also talk about choosing safer household products. Renee shared her PowerPoint presentation so you can learn how to read a product label and access the resource links she recommended to find safe products and items.
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Two employees with Veolia Environmental Services-North America will describe how the hazardous products brought to Cleansweeps sites are disposed of, whether through reuse, recycling, industrial incineration, or controlled landfilling. Josh Harmelink and Pat Baskfield establish and operate Cleansweeps collection events all over Wisconsin—about 150 events a year! Veolia is a private company that has been working with municipalities, states, and large corporations to operate Cleansweeps and other events for 40 years. They’ve been contracted by the Northwest Regional Planning Commission to process all 9 participating counties’ Cleansweeps materials since 2020.
Here’s a link to the Facebook event if you want to share it with your friends.
Other Resources
- WDNR’s Small Business Assistance Center: Confused by environmental regulations? Wondering where to go for help? WDNR has tools to help you make sure you’re doing the right thing for your business and the environment. https://dnr.wisconsin.gov/topic/SmallBusiness
- The US Environmental Protection Agency’s web site is a great place to learn what is/isn’t hazardous, as well as how to purchase or make your own safe alternatives instead of buying toxic products. https://www.epa.gov/hw/household-hazardous-waste-hhw
- The Environmental Working Group is a nonprofit organization that identifies which products are truly safe and which are not safe to use, especially cleaners. https://static.ewg.org/ewg-tip-sheets/EWG-Cleaners-WalletGuide.pdf?_ga=2.208527762.1862640653.1649432150-1672784735.1649432150
- Northwest Regional Planning Commission (Spooner) has a list of hazardous products to avoid on its web site. http://nwrpc.com/DocumentCenter/View/2785/2022-HHW-Final-Schedule-3-1-22?bidId=
The program is co-hosted by UW Madison Division of Extension-Ashland County, the Environmental Assistance Program at Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, and Veolia Environmental Services-North America.
