Category: Special Projects

Recently, Kensington North Watersheds Association has been reaching out to households, local businesses, and the agricultural community to raise awareness on the risks of hazardous waste and encourage proper disposal. We released a series of articles on hazardous wastes describing everything from what hazardous wastes are and how to get rid of them, to how to make your own safe and “greener” alternative cleaners. This article will serve as an overview on all things hazardous waste, in case you missed any previous articles, or you need a refresher!

Household hazardous wastes are leftover, or unwanted household products that are either flammable, explosive/reactive, corrosive, and/or toxic. Common and well-known examples of these include old paints (even old paint cans, as they still have paint residue), automotive products like motor oil and oil filters, and fertilizers or pesticides for your lawn and garden. However, there are many more inconspicuous hazards that we use everyday. These include household cleaners, laundry products, cosmetics, and even personal care items like our shampoos, lotions, and deodorants. The important thing to note is that most of these products are only considered hazardous wastes if there is any leftover amount of product that you no longer want. If you use your products to completion, most of them can simply be rinsed and then thrown out according to the packaging (for example, recycled if metal or #1-5, waste if #6).

It’s important to dispose of our hazardous wastes correctly; therefore, we shouldn’t pour hazardous products down the drain or flush them down the toilet. Our household septic systems and town wastewater treatment facilities are designed to treat biological waste, not hazardous waste. This means the hazardous chemicals could pass right through the system untreated and get released back into our ground and surface water. The same is true for throwing hazardous waste out into our regular waste carts. When garbage is taken to the landfill, it slowly breaks down and forms a liquid called leachate. Leachate is treated and eventually released back into our water, but these systems are not designed to treat hazardous chemicals that might be in the leachate.

So, what do you do with your hazardous wastes? Take them to a Waste Watch Drop-off Centre (WWDC)! There are six locations on PEI, the closest to Kensington being New London. All WWDC accept household hazardous wastes for free, and will dispose of them in a safe manner. Although it would be convenient to collect these products curbside, due to their hazardous nature it would not be safe and would be very costly. However, there’s plenty of reasons to take your special disposal items to a WWDC. Besides being able to drop off your hazardous wastes, you can also drop off old tires, white goods (old refrigerators, stoves, other appliances), TVs, electronics, and more, all for free. For more information on disposal, check out Island Waste Management Corporation’s website at www.iwmc.pe.ca.

By taking your unwanted, hazardous wastes to an Island WWDC, you’ll be helping divert harmful ingredients from our landfill and protecting our ground and surface water. Not only will this help extend the life of the landfill, but it will ensure we have safe, clean water and soil for years to come. PEI is already the nation’s leader in waste diversion, so let’s keep it that way!

Published in The County Line Courier, Vol. 27, No. 21, Pg. 07.

Summer is officially here on PEI, and a major part of any PEI summer is spending time outdoors. We may not think of it, but many of the outdoor activities we participate in over the summer require the use of hazardous products, and need special attention when it comes to waste disposal.

Since many of the products we use for common summer activities may be considered hazardous if they’re no longer used, they should be disposed of correctly and not poured out or thrown in the garbage. For example, sunscreen and bug spray are summertime essentials and provide us with much needed protection from the elements and pests, but leftover or expired products should be taken to a waste watch drop-off centre for proper disposal.

Many of us also take great pride in our lawns and gardens over the summer and may use household gardening products, such as fertilizers or pesticides. Any leftover household gardening products should also be taken to a waste watch drop-off centre. Going on a camping trip or firing up the barbeque? You can take your empty propane tanks under 30 lbs to either a waste watch drop-off centre or your local propane dealer, whereas propane tanks above 30 lbs only go to your local propane dealer! Finally, if you celebrate an occasion with fireworks and have any leftover, these should NOT be taken to a waste watch drop-off centre, instead you should contact your local police regarding safe disposal.

There are six waste watch drop-off centres on PEI which accept household hazardous wastes free of charge. Two of these facilities, Wellington and New London, have extended summer hours to account for the busy tourism season. A full list of these facilities and their hours is available on Island Waste Management Corporation’s website at www.iwmc.pe.ca.

Enjoying time outside with friends and family is central to a PEI summer, but it’s important to ensure that you dispose of the waste properly. Please do your part to protect our groundwater and natural environment for future generations to enjoy by properly disposing of your household hazardous waste!

Heather Harris,
Project Coordinator

Published in The County Line Courier, Vol. 27, No. 14, Pg. 15.

In previous articles in our hazardous waste series, we’ve discussed what makes a product a hazardous waste, how to properly dispose of them, the environmental impacts of improperly disposed waste, and discussed resources for learning more about products in your home. This article is the fourth and final article in the series, and we will discuss simpler, DIY alternatives for certain products.

In our household hazardous waste survey, we asked whether households would be interested in environmentally safer product alternatives. The majority of responses said yes, followed by unsure, and very few households said no. Some that said they were unsure indicated it depends on whether the products worked and how much they cost. Well, we’ve searched the internet, tried various recipes, and have compiled a few methods that we think work just as well as store-bought products and are cost effective. In fact, DIY recipes tend to be cheaper than store-bought cleaners! These recipes and the instructions for their use are listed below.

Dishwasher Detergent

1. Place dirty dishes in dishwasher as usual
2. Add 3 drops of regular dish soap to the dishwasher detergent cup
3. Fill the cup 2/3 full with baking soda
4. Add salt until the cup is nearly full
5. Run dishwasher as normal

Shower Cleaner

(works on the worst accumulation of soap scum)

1. Heat 1 cup of white vinegar in microwave
2. Add 1 cup dawn dish soap (can use a little less)
3. Whisk together and put in spray bottle
4. Spray on shower surfaces and leave to sit
5. Wipe and rinse well

Window and Glass Cleaner

1. 1 part distilled water
2. 1 part white vinegar
3. Mix together and add to spray bottle
4. Spray on surface and wipe clean

All-purpose Cleaner

(same recipe as window and glass cleaner above)

1. 1 part distilled water
2. 1 part white vinegar
3. Mix together and add to spray bottle
4. If you need extra abrasiveness, mix baking soda and water to form paste
5. Scrub first with baking soda paste, wipe clean, then use all-purpose mix

We encourage you to also try out these recipes or others you may find on the Internet. If you try any of these recipes out or have a different recipe than the ones we’ve listed, feel free to share them with us by email to KensingtonNorthWatershed @gmail.com, on Facebook at Kensington North Watersheds Association or on Instagram at Kensington_north_watersheds

This series has been part of Kensington North’s Hazardous Wastes Stewardship Pilot Project which we partnered on with Environment and Climate Change Canada.

Heather Harris,
Project Coordinator

Published in The County Line Courier, Vol. 27, No. 09, Pg. 04.

In previous articles in our hazardous waste series, we’ve discussed what household hazardous wastes are, how to dispose of them properly, and the impacts of improper disposal. In article three, we’ll be discussing some of the unknowingly harmful ingredients lurking in everyday items in our household!

Nowadays, when we go to the cleaning aisle of a grocery store, there’s an overwhelming abundance of household cleaners, seemingly for every task imaginable! There are cleaners for the kitchen, stove top, bathroom tiles, toilet bowl, and the list goes on. Many of us likely have a shelf or cupboard filled with these various products that we only touch a few times each year, but have you ever stopped to think about what’s in them?

If you go to your product cupboard and grab a few, you may be surprised to see that many have no ingredient list on the back. The reason for this? Cleaning product companies are not required to list all of their ingredients and finding them out can be surprisingly difficult. However, there is a very helpful resource online we’ve discovered at www.ewg.org. EWG stands for the Environmental Working Group, which is a US based non-profit organization that focuses on human health and the environment. They have several very informative databases that you can search through, including a database for cleaners, cosmetics, and even sunscreens!

On their cleaner database you can search through over 2,500 products, where they’ve scored every cleaner with a grade A-F based on their transparency and ingredients. For each product there’s a breakdown of their hazard level for different categories such as asthma/respiratory, skin allergies and irritation, and the environment. Additionally, you can see whether that product has been green-certified, and how good their ingredient disclosure is. EWG has also put together lists of all the known ingredients they could find for each product, but due to companies not having to disclose the ingredients, these lists are not always exhaustive. On these ingredient lists, each ingredient also has a grade A-F and you can click on each ingredient to learn more about their impacts!

Searching through various cleaning products on EWG’s website has been eye-opening for us. It’s interesting to see how marketing can be misleading, with some products putting spins on the word “organic”, “clean”, and “natural”, only to score rather poorly and have ingredients with health and environmental concerns! This practice is known as “greenwashing”.

Additionally, some ingredients have us scratching our heads, wondering why they’re even included in the first place. Fragrance, for example, is listed as an environmental concern, a skin allergy concern, and a respiratory concern, and it has been added to over 1,500 products on their list. It’s understandable that we may want our freshly washed laundry to smell nice when it comes out of the wash, but is it really necessary for our dishwashing liquid to smell like apple blossoms or citrus?

Now, we aren’t saying to empty your cupboards and throw out every single household cleaner you have, but rather to take a look at this website and educate yourself on these products and labels. Then, next time you’re in the cleaning aisle of a grocery store, reconsider if it’s necessary to purchase a different cleaner for every surface or consider a better scoring product alternative! Ultimately, the more educated and knowledgeable we are on the products and hazards in our homes, the better we can make informed decisions on the issues that matter to us.

Heather Harris,
Project Coordinator

Published in The County Line Courier, Vol. 27, No. 08, Pg. 04.

Kensington North Watersheds Association has partnered with Environment and Climate Change Canada on a hazardous waste stewardship pilot project, and we would like to thank everyone who participated in our survey, both online or by mail! We sent out approximately 2,315 surveys to residents in the Kensington North area and to-date we have received 314 responses!

We found that most households (98%) used products such cleaners, laundry products, and personal care products. Other product categories had lower usage, with paint products being used by 80% of households, automotive products by 77%, and just over half using lawn/garden care products (51%).

We received a wide range of responses when we asked how households dispose of each product category, but we found for products such as paint, batteries, and automotive products, most households are disposing of unwanted products correctly by taking them to a Waste Watch Drop-off Centre (WWDC) or another dealer for disposal. However, other categories such as cosmetics, personal care items, and light bulbs showed that many households may not be disposing of these unwanted products correctly at a WWDC.

Some common reasons why households did not dispose of their unwanted products correctly were: they didn’t know what products were hazardous wastes, they didn’t know hazardous wastes were disposed separately from normal waste, transporting hazardous wastes to a drop-off centre is inconvenient, and they didn’t know disposal at a WWDC was free. We also received many helpful suggestions and feedback in our comment section at the end of our survey, with the most common suggestions being that household/curbside pickup for some hazardous products would be convenient or having a collection facility in town would be useful.

Finally, close to 85% of households responded that they would be interested in environmentally safer products, so stay-tuned for follow-up articles on some DIY suggestions and resources for determining what makes a product safe!

Heather Harris,
Project Coordinator

Published in The County Line Courier, Vol. 27, No. 05, Pg. 11.

Kensington North Watersheds recently conducted a survey to households in our area on household hazardous wastes as part of our pilot project in partnership with Environment and Climate Change Canada. We received lots of great feedback on what products people use, how they’re most commonly disposing of their products, and what factors determine whether households are properly disposing of these products.

The most common responses as to why households aren’t disposing of these products properly were 1, they didn’t know what products were considered hazardous wastes and 2, they didn’t know hazardous wastes were disposed separately from regular waste. So, we’ll be highlighting some information and resources on hazardous wastes and their impacts in a series of articles!

So, what is a household hazardous waste? When we hear the term hazardous waste, it elicits images of large, bright yellow warning labels, hazmat suits, and mysterious green, oozing fluid, but hazardous wastes can be much more inconspicuous than that. Hazardous wastes are considered unwanted products that are flammable, toxic, corrosive, or explosive – or some combination of those four. Many of us probably have a shelf in our house filled with obvious examples of these.

Products such as spray paint, paint thinner, motor oil, and garden pest killers are all obvious examples of household hazardous wastes. However, there are more products sitting in our cupboards that are considered hazardous wastes too! Even household cleaners, laundry products, personal care items and cosmetics are potentially hazardous! It’s hard to imagine products that we use in such close association with our bodies and food could be hazardous, but they do contain ingredients that warrant special disposal if you no longer want that product.

However, if you’ve used a product, such as shampoo, to completion and the bottle has been rinsed, it’s safe to throw in your recycle bag. Special disposal of hazardous wastes is mostly only required when there’s unwanted or leftover product that can’t or won’t be used.

There are some exceptions to this, however. Containers for products such as motor oil or even empty paint cans cannot be rinsed and disposed of, instead they must go to a specified collection facility.

So, if special disposal of household hazardous wastes is required, where do you take it? In the past there were many more landfills on PEI than the one we have today and very little, if anything, was sorted. That means all types of products were thrown into the garbage, from metals and cans, to pesticides and agricultural products. Luckily, today Island Waste Management Corp. (IWMC) has six Waste Watch Drop-off Centres (WWDC) on PEI that accept household hazardous wastes free of charge, in order to keep hazardous products out of our landfill!

There are some exceptions to this as well, such as old medication and vitamins, which can be taken to any Island pharmacy for safe disposal, or medical sharps which should be placed in a specified sharps disposal container.

If you’re ever in doubt on how to dispose of a particular product, we recommend searching on IWMC’s website at www.iwmc.pe.ca, calling them for assistance, or dropping by a WWDC during their hours of operation and asking staff! Stay tuned for the next articles in our series on hazardous wastes!

Heather Harris,
Project Coordinator

Published in The County Line Courier, Vol. 27, No. 05, Pg. 09.

In the first article in our series on hazardous wastes, we discussed what makes a product a hazardous waste and what to do with the product if you want to dispose of an unwanted quantity of it, but why does any of this matter? What are the impacts of improper disposal? Well, there are a variety and they vary based on the product. From a watershed organization’s perspective, our concern is around water quality and safety. It may seem as though improper disposal of something like old paint couldn’t possibly have effects on our water here on PEI, but our water cycle is surprisingly intertwined with disposal!

Almost any way you dispose of a product, that disposal method eventually leads to water entering back into our water cycle. For example, products flushed down the toilet or poured down the drain will either travel to a wastewater treatment facility, like we have in Kensington, or to your septic system if you live outside of town. There are lots of complicated processes going on in these systems to break down our organic waste and treat the water before its released back into our environment; however, these systems are not designed to treat hazardous wastes, and harmful ingredients could be passing through, back into our ground and surface water untreated.

So, what about throwing out hazardous wastes in your black cart? Well, that can be linked to our water cycle too! PEI’s landfill is designed to catch water given off from our garbage, called leachate, and treat it onsite before it is released back into the surrounding environment. However, this system isn’t designed for treating hazardous materials either.

It may seem as though we would be disposing of such a small quantity of these products when compared to all the water on PEI that these products would simply be diluted and harmless, but some ingredients, such as heavy metals, can biomagnify and work their way up the food chain. This means substances are taken up by very small forms of life, like zooplankton, which is then eaten by a small fish, then by a larger fish, and then by a bigger predator, like a bird or even human. Each time the prey is eaten, there are higher and higher concentrations of that substance. Other substances, such as the antibacterial and antimicrobial ingredient triclosan, which is added to various products from soaps to toothpastes, can pass through a wastewater treatment system unaltered and damage aquatic life upon its release.

For these various reasons, it’s important to reconsider how you’re disposing of household hazardous wastes, and instead, opt to take your unwanted products to one of six Island Waste Watch Drop-off Centres for safe disposal!

Heather Harris,
Project Coordinator

Published in The County Line Courier, Vol. 27, No. 06, Pg. 04.