That is a good question. It very well could be. And it is a good question to ask.
Nathan,
I can see how, how to properly dispose of various hazardous or semi-hazardous materials can drive a small business owner not only to drink, but force 'em out of business. As there are all kinds of city, county, state and federal regulations that they have to deal with. It can/must be a logistical nightmare for some businesses.
Tojo72,
This is so true, and I hope that I haven’t opened up a can of worms by asking about it.
I don’t know about most other places, but here in Kansas each county has a hazardess waste disposal site. I keep a quart can with a screw on top under my modeling desk and put my dirty paint and on occasion old paint in that until it’s full. Then I make sure the lid is installed tightly, mark the can’s contents on the side w/a permanent marker and take it to the disposal site.
I talked to the local haz-waste person and am following their advice .Did you know you can neutralize that old thinner with DAWN dish - soap ? You mix one tablespoon of it with the one pint of thinner and two cups of water . Seal it tightly and dispose of it normally . This sure helps me as I use a lot of it in my business of building models on commission .
There is also the question of disposing of rags etc as well . I was told to put them in the largest ZIP-LOC bag I could find fill it and squeeze out as much air as you can seal it and then dispose of it too ,
in a normal manner .
Now for acrylisc , I just wash brushes in the water and soap and then when a bottle is empty wash it out with soap and water as well . I re-use ALL the jars I can for custom mixed paint . this include large or small amounts . If a client’s model requires larger amounts of paint ( a pint or quart amount ,for instance.) I use it all then washout the can , stuff it with old rags , paper towels and dispose of it in the normal way .They want you to pay by the minimum load at the HAZ-MAT site which is 1/2 ton minimum and that is $25.00 bucks .That’s a little high for two one quart cans . Tanker-builder
Not so much for models, but when I throw away thinner from full-size spray painting, I pour it in the drum I use for waste motor oil. It then gets disposed of when the guy comes and gets the waste oil. As far as throwing bottles, etc., away, I would guess there’s a good chance if you leave them open and let the paint residue dry, you can just throw them in the regular trash. I can do that here, also, with the big fuel filters from our airport refuelers, just let them drain in a pan and dry out a week or so and throw them in the trashcan. OTOH, if you pour the thinner on concrete, like a driveway, on a sunny, or especially a hot sunny day, what’s it gonna do, evaporate? It’s not going into a drain and into some body of water somewhere that way either.
That’s interesting about Dawn dish soap, thank you for the information. You’d think that they’d have two fee schedules, one for commercial disposal and one for household disposal.
I’m not saying that what you’re doing is right or wrong, but I think that you might want to check and see if you can mix chemicals into the waste oil. As I always thought that one of the reasons for collecting waste oil was to recycle it somehow so that it could be used again. If it has chemicals like paint thinner added to it, it probably changes the overall chemical makeup of it and changes the way that it is handled.
It’s funny that you talk about pouring it out on a concrete driveway, I remember doing something similar, only instead of waiting for it to evaporate, I’d light it on fire. [;)]