The Dekalb County Sanitation Division (DCSD) is holding a Household Hazardous Waste recycling event on Oct. 12, 2019. The event will take place at the DCSD’s Central Transfer Station at 3720 Leroy Scott Drive in Decatur. The event will last from 8 a.m. to 12 p.m.

According to National Geographic, “Toxic waste can harm people, animals, and plants, whether it ends up in the ground, in streams, or even in the air.”

Pauline Andrea, the Public Information Officer for the DCSD, believes these events benefit the community by providing an accessible way for residents to dispose of hazardous materials properly.

“DeKalb County has been branded the green county [due to] environmental sustainability and environmental stewardship. We make sure that residents in the county dispose of hazardous materials responsibly. Because let’s say we don’t host an event like this and have this option available to residents, they may end up putting a lot of these dangerous chemicals in the household garbage and that could be quite detrimental.”

To dispose of hazardous materials when the DCSD is not holding a hazardous waste recycling event, Andrea recommends another organization.

“Residents sometimes call to ask us, ‘What should I do with things like paint or dangerous household chemicals’ that they can’t dispose of [in] their garbage and we do refer them to a place in Atlanta called [The Center for Hard to Recycle Materials] (CHaRM)… What they do is they accept… things that are hard to recycle and hazardous materials.”

Some items the DCSD is accepting at the Household Hazardous Waste event include aerosols, batteries and paint. Find the full list of the wastes the DCSD is and is not accepting here.