How and Why to Dispose of Hazardous Waste

The program is about 45 minutes long.

Link to watch the webinar

Join our Community Development Educator Lissa Radke and Sheldon Johnson, the executive director of Northwest Regional Planning Commission, as they talk about how to dispose of toxic materials at 9 community collections events in 2023.

You’ll learn why an annual Cleansweeps collection event was started, what’s acceptable and what’s not, where to take materials throughout the year in Ashland County, and how to avoid hazardous materials by choosing safe alternatives.

Green Your Life: Reduce Your Use of Hazardous Materials!

You can view a recording of this webinar on YouTube by following this link

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.

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 Cleansweep 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.

-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.

-Two employees with Veolia Environmental Services-North America will describe how the hazardous products brought to Cleansweep sites are disposed of, whether through reuse, recycling, industrial incineration, or controlled landfilling. Josh Harmelink and Pat Baskfield establish and operate Cleansweep 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 Cleansweep and other events for 40 years. They’ve been contracted by the Northwest Regional Planning Commission to process all 9 participating counties’ Cleansweep materials since 2020.