Batteries, paint cans and laptops, oh my. Hazardous waste is everywhere you look, even if you don’t realize it, — you hold it in your pocket, it sits under your bathroom sink and comes out of your car when you are completing routine maintenance. Few people know everything that is considered hazardous waste in their very own household, let alone how to safely get rid of it.
Twin Oaks Landfill will be collecting hazardous household waste on Saturday, Oct. 21 at the Texas A&M University Services Building. The event will welcome community drop offs from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m., rain or shine on Harvey Road and they will also be accepting new or used books and donations for Books & a Blanket. The event is free for Brazos Valley residents and they will accept a wide range of items such as aerosol cans, paints, chemicals, cooking oil and more.
An event that started in 1994, the biannual collection saw over 2,400 cars in their drive through in April 2023. Twin Oaks aims to make safe waste disposal easy, so there will be four lanes that Brazos Valley residents may bring hazardous waste and simply drive through without even leaving their car. Hazardous Household Waste coordinator Danielle Ruiz says she is involved from start to finish and as soon as the April collection ends, she is planning for the fall.
“There aren't a lot of options for disposal of household hazardous waste because we can't accept them at the Twin Oaks landfill,” Danielle says. “So we like to give residents of the Brazos Valley a place to bring those materials for safe disposal.”
Twin Oaks has an extensive list of items they will accept as well as items they will not accept. Danielle says the best way to check if a product is hazardous is to check the labels for words like “corrosive, irritant, toxic, caution, flammable” or include any chemicals that may be dangerous. This year, Danielle says Twin Oaks will not be accepting medications, however she says that there is information online about proper disposal.
“The reason we want to make sure that those get properly disposed of is we don't want [medications] laying around the house because that could potentially harm children,” Danielle says. “As far as chemicals are concerned, making sure that you're not pouring it down the drain or that you're not putting it back in a garbage can or that it's not going to end up at the landfill.”
Since the first event with 815 families attending, Danielle says the company is now on collection 58 with hopes to service the area. All Brazos Valley residents are welcome to bring their hazardous waste to the event. The event is open to all seven counties including Brazos, Burleson, Grimes, Leon, Madison, Robertson and Washington.
"We're trying to keep them out of the landfill,” Danielle says. “We're trying to keep them out of household garbage cans, we're trying to keep them out of the wastewater system, trying to keep them out of the back of garbage trucks because they can't be potentially hazardous in transit.”
For more information about the location and items accepted, visit the Twin Oaks Household Hazardous Waste website page.
