I see a lot of people say this, but I rarely see any actionable advice.
How does your average residential person find and dispose of chemicals like this? Seems like most people end up pouring them down the drain simply because they don't know how to actually find a better means of disposing them.
A person doesn't get a pass on things like this because other people didn't spoon-feed them the info. Read the law, call the EPA, google it.
Ultimately if you want to use chemicals that have the potential to poison our shared environment you need to be willing to do the legwork to be confident that you are doing things responsibly.
I don't know, but if I were doing this, I'd find out. Call your residential waste management company and ask them who handles commercial hazmat in the area, if you can't think of any other way to start.
If you're planning out your own home fab, you're researching a bunch of other things and giving serious thought to a lot of nontrivial problems. Choosing to ignore waste disposal is irresponsible, and you deserve any legal hassle you run in to.
> I see a lot of people say this, but I rarely see any actionable advice.
If you have industrial quantities of chemicals (more than a gallon or so), you need to call the relevant entities.
If you are lucky enough to have a hazardous waste disposal locally, obviously use that.
If you have stuff that doesn't break down well in water (cooking grease, for example), pouring that down the drain is always a recipe for trouble. You're simply going to clog your pipes. You need to dispose of that properly. There is a reason why restaurants have grease traps. Normally, residential quantities of this stuff can be placed in normal trash.
You can try to dispose of motor oil at gas stations, service stations, etc., but a lot of places won't take oil from end consumers anymore as it may be contaminated and their recycler will charge them. I actually had a very difficult time disposing of motor oil about 15 years ago. (I don't do my own oil changes anymore for this reason). I got told by the local enforcement "At the end of the day, dishwashing liquid and pour it down the toilet and the sewage treatment plant will chew it up the rest of the way." Obviously if everybody does this, it's a problem, but if it's really a one-off, it's okay-ish.
If, however, your stuff is soluble in water and you have a relatively small amount of it and your waste goes to a sewage treatment plant, pouring it down the drain while diluting it with a lot of water is often your only choice (be careful--solvents and acids can produce fairly noxious vapors even when diluted heavily) Quite often industrial disposal sites simply will not take small quantities of waste from individuals as there are liability issues involved.
Now, you may not like what even a dilute solution does to your plumbing, but that's a different issue. If your sewage doesn't go to a sewage treatment plant, but instead goes to something like a septic system, then you probably don't want to do this.
DO NOT POUR STUFF DOWN STORM DRAINS. Those normally do NOT go to sewage treatment plants (there are exceptions--but they are rare) and, as such, are a really quick way to contaminate the environment.
PSA: here in the SF bay, auto parts stores all have oil recycling receptacles. Check with them before you go and put it down the drain, surfactant or not. For other substances, there are also hazmat acceptance sites around, although they seem to keep annoying hours.
Your average residential person doesn't have a homemade semiconductor manufacturing facility in their garage either, I'm sure getting into contact with local waste disposal agencies is a far easier task than building all this stuff.
> How does your average residential person find and dispose of chemicals like this?
How do you dispose electronics? Batteries? Oil? Tires? Cars? Furniture? construction materials? ...
You go to the webpage of your local garbage disposal authority, and read their FAQ, which typically contains where all their disposal centers are, their addresses, opening hours, etc. and what can you dispose on each one.
If what you want to dispose is not listed anywhere, you call them and ask them.
In my country if you want to buy these types of chemicals, you need to ask a company for a price, and the company will ask: who are you? what do you want them for? what's your process for the chemicals? Etc. If you fail to answer any of the questions, they are obligated to report that a "sketchy" party tried to buy some chemicals from them. That might get you a visit from the police, asking even more questions.
That's balancing your freedom to do whatever you want with chemicals with my freedom to enjoy a world that hasn't been polluted by idiots that didn't know what they were doing.
I see a lot of people say this, but I rarely see any actionable advice.
How does your average residential person find and dispose of chemicals like this? Seems like most people end up pouring them down the drain simply because they don't know how to actually find a better means of disposing them.