Household Hazardous Waste Collection Changes

The Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation’s Household Hazardous Waste Program is making changes for the coming Fiscal Year and into the future to provide mobile collection service to a greater number of counties and to capture the most hazardous household chemicals throughout the State. In an effort to achieve this goal the HHW Program will no longer accept paint or electronics at the mobile collection events. These two categories of waste have comprised almost three-quarters of the material collected at these events in the past, but are considered minimally hazardous wastes. TDEC says experience indicates that when these two waste streams are diverted away from the mobile collection events, participation and idle times in long lines decrease tremendously. This makes these events more effective at recovering and disposing of the most dangerous household chemicals and wastes.

For paint, the State’s contractor will collect oil-based paint only, at fixed locations. They will continue to provide storage containers, box liners, and milk run pickup service. This service will continue to be provided at no cost to the County. Refer to the Household Paint Management Guidance and Policy on TDEC’s Web page for details. That policy can be found here.

The Household Hazardous Waste Program is available to discuss options that can best meet the needs of each County. If you would like to participate and need technical assistance in launching a local program for the collection of batteries, oil, paint, antifreeze and electronics, you can contact Paula Mitchell at 615-532-9265 or by email at paula.mitchell@tn.gov for more information. TDEC will be soliciting HHW requests for the fall season at a later date.