Legal Commentary

Annals of Safe Waste Disposal

By Michael Froomkin

(A note mainly to myself, but please read along.) As a result of some delayed Spring cleaning?ok, very delayed Spring cleaning?I find I have a number of things to dispose of.

The useful items are going to charities.

Most of the trash I know what to do with.

But I have three classes of toxic waste that take special disposal: batteries, compact fluorescent light bulbs (aka CF bulbs), and a very very old non-functioning laptop.

Radio Shack kindly took the batteries, including the one from the laptop. I removed the hard drive for security. The issue is what to do with the carcass.

Miami-Dade doesn’t make either of these tasks easy. The only place I can find that will take the CF bulbs are the County’s Permanent Home Chemical Collection Centers facilities, which are not exactly next door:

The Centers are located in West Dade at 8831 N.W. 58th Street, and in South Dade at 23707 SW 97th Avenue Gate-B. Normal hours of operation are Wednesday through Sunday, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

The web site doesn’t actually say they take CF Bulbs (although this list includes ?fluorescent bulbs? generally), but Greener Miami says they will [2010: Archive.org version], and I trust them. (I did try calling the number for the Centers, but gave up after 10 minutes on hold.) [2010: Miami-Dade has changed the Centers' web site to make clear that they do in fact take CF Bulbs.]

And even if they will take the CF bulbs, they won’t take the electronics. For that I have to go to certain of the Trash & Recycling Centers (the ones marked with a ?2?):

• North Dade 2*
  21500 NW 47 Avenue
• Norwood
  19901 NW 7 Avenue
• Palm Springs North 2*
  7870 NW 178 Street
• West Little River 2*
  1830 NW 79 Street
• Golden Glades 1, 2*
  140 NW 160 Street
• Sunset Kendall 2*
  8000 SW 107 Avenue
• Snapper Creek 1, 3*
  2200 SW 117 Avenue
• Richmond Heights
  14050 Boggs Drive
• Chapman Field 3, 4*
  13600 SW 60 Avenue
• Eureka Drive 2*
  9401 SW 184 Street
• West Perrine 2*
  16651 SW 107 Ave
• Moody Drive 1, 2*
  12970 SW 268 Street
• South Miami Heights
  20800 SW 117 Court

Sigh.

[Original draft 9/3/2008. In preparation for my blog redesign, I've been going through draft blog posts that somehow never made it to publication. This is one of them.]

2010: I still have the light bulbs somewhere.  And as I’m doing another round of cleaning now, the piles of toxics are likely to grow.

Full post as published by Discourse.net on December 21, 2010 (boomark / email).