With many hazardous materials around the home, sometimes those items expire or need to be thrown away.

Adair and Guthrie County Emergency Management Coordinator Bob Kempf says that making sure the chemical or material is in a sealed container is one of the first things to do. After that, he says you need to contact the company or department that performs the trash removal service for you, and see if those materials are something that they will pick up. Kempf shares another tip on disposing of hazardous materials.

“Another thing you can do is always contact the transfer station or your landfill directly yourself and make sure that they do take those hazardous materials and what their requirements are on how that should be packaged for disposal. Like batteries, you know regular batteries like the nitrite batteries and the hydride batteries, things like that are not to be put in the regular garbage.”

Kempf mentions that there are places that will accept batteries that can’t go out with the regular trash. He adds that the batteries that people use the most in their electronics, alkaline batteries, are safe to throw away in the garbage though, so there’s no need to worry about them.