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.

• 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 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.