Welcome to the Grower Pesticide Safety
Course. This is Chapter 15, How to Dispose of
Pesticide and Pesticide Containers
Safely. Chapter 15 starts on page 157 of
the manual.  There are 10 slides in this
presentation and it will take us about 8
minutes to review. What will I learn by
the end of this lesson? You should be
ready to, list the 3 steps of empty
pesticide container recycling, describe
how to dispose of different types of
pesticide containers, describe the steps
you must take to dispose of the surplus
pesticides and spray mix.  There are three
things you may need to dispose of  --
 empty
containers  -- surplus spray mix  -- and
pesticide you no longer use. So let's go
ahead and look at each one of these.
First we think about avoiding container
disposal problems. So we're
going to have to dispose of containers
but if we buy in bulk and there's lots
of pesticide products now offered as
bulk refillable tote containers, and they
can go back and be refilled and reused. So that's one way of avoiding having
these containers leftover, and also there
are some products that are
water-soluble packaging and these
packages will drop into the spray tank
and will dissolve but you do have to
follow the mixing and loading directions
on the pesticide label and notice when
they should be added and how much
agitation is required, and you want to
make sure that they dissolve properly
and you mix them load them properly. But
again another way to avoid having lots
of plastic jugs left over. The other thing we
don't want to have, we don't want to have
too much of the pesticides left over so
keep an accurate inventory and mark the
date of purchase on the container and
continue to use up your supply in your
inventory.  Buy only what you need for each
season and accurately calculate the amount
you need to mix. So you want to buy ten
containers or three containers whenever
the number make sure you're not buying
more than you need but you certainly
want to buy the amount you need to to
make the application. All right
so barring all that we will probably
have some empty pesticide containers. And
the empty containers still contain about
1% of the pesticide in the bottom. So we
do need to rinse that. So we've advocated
for triple rinsing for quite a few years
and there's some steps to do for triple
rinsing. The first step is to rinse which
is following the rinsing procedures. In
your manual, there's a standard operating
procedure for rinsing pesticide
containers and it has 10 steps.  It's ten
steps but here we're going to just go
through that a little bit briefer and
you can look back into your manual for
that graphic . So 10 percent full, so we
want to fill that empty container back
with about ten percent of water. Then
we're going to shake that around and
rinse all the sides of that container
and then pour back that rinsate into
the spray tank, and we're going to do
that two more times, to get the triple
rinsing done. Okay. Step two for recycling.
We've got a cap and we have maybe a
plastic sleeve around that jug. So both
of those cannot be sent to the pesticide
collection site for recycling. They have
to go to the garbage so paper, take that
paper label, and put that into your
recycling, take the cap off, the cap is of
a different plastic it can't go with
that container either to recycling, so
put that into a garbage for disposal. The
last part is taking them back to that
pesticide collection site and where
they're gathered up into
a big location that's locked and saved
until they are going to the recycling
depot and and taken for plastic
recycling. Some best practices and let's
review these. Use jet rinsing devices.
These are okay to do if you don't
want to take the time of doing that
triple rinse and filling each jug you
can buy jet rinsing devices. They're
effective. Take less time. So they would
rinse for about thirty seconds and
you've got the job done. You would just
push it into the bottom of the container
and at the same time that's putting a
hole in your container which is what we
want to do so that no one would ever
want to use the product jug to carry a
different liquid. So never reuse an empty
pesticide container. The container looks
clean. It may still have pesticide
residues in it so we want that hole in the
container so no one can reuse it. So
another good feature of those jet
rinsing devices. I just mention that CleanFARMS, they're the empty pesticide
container recycling program, and they
have a website that you can go in to look at
as well. So CleanFARMS accepts the
triple rinsed, plastic and metal
containers for recycling, and they have
over 200 sites in Ontario and these
sites and the cost to the farmer is
nothing. It's just a matter of getting
your containers that are triple rinsed
back to the collection depot.  And you
can see a picture here where all the
containers are, are gathered up at
the depot. And what they do is they take
it to a site where the plastic will be
recycled and the recycling plastic over
the years has gone into many different
items but here it is into a tile
drainage plastic and used that way. All
right. Disposal of surplus spray mix, that's
the other thing you'll have leftover. You
would want to first apply the surplus
spray mix to another crop on the label so
if you're finished the field and you
come to the end and you have some
leftover in that tank, if you have
more soybeans that you can go into and
finish that off or corn or apples or
whatever you have, and apply that surplus
spray mix to another crop on the label, or
we can go over and respray that field
we've just come out of if we dilute that
spray mix down.  And the recommendation
for dilution is ten parts of water with
one part spray mix. So here's the
gentleman refilling his tank with water
so that he can go back out into the
field and spray that diluted mix in
exactly the same spot where he's come out of.
Apply only to crops that are named
on the label. Now you don't want damage
to a crop that's not on the label so and
that of course, also would be illegal. So
make sure you're applying it to crops
that are listed on that label. The next
thing we have to get rid of, disposal of
surplus pesticide. So we're storing some
pesticides  -- we didn't use them the next
year, the next year as well, so we realize
we're not going to use this, we should
get rid of that and clean up our
inventory. So CleanFARMS will have
obsolete pesticide collection days and
they're offered free to farmers and
they're offered every three years in
Ontario and usually in the fall so look
for that in September and October and
check online at their website for dates.
If you want to do it within that three
year period and you can't wait for the
obsolete pesticide collection day,
environmental waste haulers can collect
your pesticides and remove those for you.
If you would contact the waste removal
company in your area and you can just
search the Yellow Pages for that. Your
municipality may have a way to get rid
of toxic hazardous waste. And hazardous
waste disposal is different in each
municipality across Ontario. You're going
to have to phone and ask. You may know
already if you have a regular day where
hazardous waste is collected in your
municipality. So ask how you can dispose
of your
leftover pesticides and see what's
available. Alright. So again, that would be
disposal of containers, disposal of our
spray mix, and disposal of surplus
pesticides
