08/20/07 Cleaning Up

Cleaning Up. I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report. There always seems to be an abundant amount of "stuff" around the house. And there is some "stuff" you don't always know how to get rid of. When it comes to pesticides, you just can 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. According to Hoffman there will be several opportunities in Eastern Washington this fall. HOFFMAN: We have a few events coming up this fall in Eastern Washington. We have the one at Pasco on October 4th; we also have one up at Okanagan on October 17th and one at Orondo near Wenatchee on October 18th. To sign up for these events, the one at Pasco they should try to contact our office by August 27th and for Okanagan and Orondo by September 6th. 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. That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.