Disposal of chemicals

[desmo]

Hey all,

What do you all do with your chemicals? I'm thinking of getting a little darkroom together.

Thank you!

- Mark

[tkamiya]

What kind of chemicals? Most B&W chemicals are far less hazardous than many house-hold chemicals. What I have been reading says in non-industrial quantity, they are safe enough to simply drain them into sewer. That's what I do.

Welcome to APUG!

[Vaughn]

The only basic B&W chemical that our sewer treatment folks don't want to go down the drain (and they are pretty fussy) is used fixer, as they don't like the silver content. So we put aside the used fixer and toners for hazardous waste disposal here at the university.

Vaughn

[Mike Wilde]

I do take my RA-4 and E-6 bleaches and blixes to the HHW depot adjacent to my nearest landfill transfer station along with the spent fixers and toners.

In the winter I dehydrate all but toners in stainless steel trays left out up high in my garage. They evaporate and freeze away off and on, and by spring there is but a few re-used baby food jars of crusty sludge left to be spatula'ed up of say 4L of blix that started out 3 months prior. By spring there is yard waste to deal with, so no need to dehydrate after then, even though it would go faster if it was not frozen half of the time.

[Romary]

I take my used develloper, fixer and toners to the "déchetterie" (hazardous and non-hazardous waste disposal places in France).

[desmo]

Thanks much for all your replies. I'm not sure we have "déchetteries" in New York City.

I was kind of hoping some nice New Yorkers would reply also.

[Jeff L]

The Hudson?? Joking of course.
There has to be a few HWD around NYC.

[Edwardv]

I am very fortunate to take my used fixed to Severn Graphics for disposal. The developers go down the sink. Don't use stop so that not a problem because I use water. As for selenium tone it goes down the drain since my ratio to selenium to water is hight.

[jnanian]

i use a waste hauler to remove all of my spent chemistry, i am on septic.

i am a distributer of the silver magnet ....
it works very well ...
if you are interested in learning more about the silver magnet feel free to contact me ..

good luck!
john

[blackandwhitebeetle]

lets try to recycle our fixer so we can recycle the silver. Remember silver is a non renewable resource.