Pesticide Disposal

Collecting Pesticides. I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report. The Washington State Department of Agriculture (WSDA) is sponsoring a free pesticide disposal event at Puyallup next month, but the deadline to sign up is approaching fast-Aug. 6. 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. WSDA encourages farmers, businesses, residents and landowners to inspect their storage sheds, barns, shops and garages and look for agricultural and commercial-grade pesticide products that are no longer needed or wanted. Participants turned over 167,000 pounds of unwanted pesticides to WSDA last year, including 3,300 pounds from the 2009 collection at Puyallup. Other scheduled WSDA pesticide collection events for the year include Vancouver on Sept. 14, Pasco on Sept. 28 and Spokane on Oct. 5. That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.