Pesticide Disposal

Pesticide Disposal. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

It’s time again to clean out. When it comes to pesticides, you just can not dump it down a drain or on the ground so the Washington State Department of Agriculture is offering free pesticide collection days this fall. Joe Hoffman is the WSDA’s program coordinator.

HOFFMAN: Our program gives people an opportunity to properly dispose of any agricultural or commercial grade pesticide that they no longer want. It can be something that may be sitting around for some time that’s prohibited from use or they may have changed their operation or gone into organic production and just don’t use the material and rather than it sitting around, time to get rid of it.

There are no fees and no set limits to amount of pesticides but Hoffman recommends a phone call to let the collection agency know what you have.

HOFFMAN: Also to transport these on public roads many of these are hazardous materials for transport so they would need paperwork and we send that out to the customer so they’re legal while they’re driving on the road.

There are a number of locations around the state where you can take unwanted materials including Ellensburg, Okanogan, Orondo, Prosser, Spokane and Mount Vernon. You should contact the WSDA for deadline dates to sign up. Over 2.1 million pounds of unusable pesticides have been collected and properly disposed.

That’s today’s Fruit Grower Report. I’m Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.