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Eau Claire County Recycling Program
Special materials to bring to Clean Sweep!
Oil Filter and Oil Absorbent landfill ban
The oil filters and absorbents ban is intended to keep these materials out of Wisconsin landfills. Each year, Wisconsinites throw away an estimated 187,000 gallons of oil in used oil in oil filters and 1.6 million gallons of oil in oil absorbents. Oil is a valuable, reusable material. By recycling filters and absorbent material, used oil can be extracted and reused. Filters also contain steel components that can be recycled. Recycling the approximately nine million filters that currently enter the landfill will save over 4.5 million pounds of steel for reuse.
Recycling options for oil filters and oil absorbent materials are available at various automotive businesses in Eau Claire County. Businesses that change oil in automobiles will, most likely, recycle the old filter and all oil absorbents used in the process. For residents who change their vehicles oil on their own, it is best to call your local automotive service center and ask if they take used oil filters and oil absorbents and whether or not there is a fee involved. Or County residents have the option to wait for the scheduled Clean Sweep events at WRR Environmental Services where all oil filters and oil absorbents will be accepted for recycling with a small fee incurred. For more information on the ban, including a list of covered materials and links to recycling options, see the DNR website.
Special Alert - Mercury!
Mercury, the only metal that is liquid at room temperature, has many characteristics that have made it valuable to a variety of industries, These include:
- it conducts electricity;
- it expands and contracts uniformly with temperature change;
- it combines easily with other metals;
- it is toxic so it can be used as a preservative and fungicide.
Some common applications include thermometers and blood pressure cuffs, thermostats, automotive light and appliance switches, fluorescent lamps and laptop computer screens, and as a fungicide in paints. Mercury is also a component in some types of dry cell batteries and is typically present in coal.
Mercury is a neurotoxin that affects the brain, spinal cord, kidneys and liver.
Mercury vaporizes at room temperature. Thus, when a mercury thermometer or fluorescent lamp is broken, the vapors escape into the atmosphere. Eventually, the mercury returns to earth through precipitation and enters lakes and streams where it is acted upon by bacterial to form methyl-mercury. In this form, mercury is introduced into the food chain. Currently, ALL Wisconsin lakes now carry a fish consumption advisory because of mercury contamination.
Efforts have been made to reduce the amount of or eliminate altogether mercury in products for which alternatives are readily available. Examples include digital thermometers and thermostats and automotive light switches that use ball bearings in place of mercury. Mercury has been banned from most dry cell batteries sold in Wisconsin, and many jurisdictions throughout the country have banned the sale of mercury containing devices such as thermometers.
In Eau Claire County, residents may bring mercury and mercury containing devices to the county's regularly scheduled Clean Sweep events. Non-residential participants need to bring mercury in during scheduled VSQG collections.
They are hard to see but there are mercury droplets from a broken thermometer on the carpet in the left picture. Using a black light, the toxic plume that rises as the mercury vaporizes is easily seen.
Mercury Mouth Math
- The standard fever thermometer contains .7 grams of mercury.
- This is enough mercury to pollute an otherwise 20-acre lake.
- The average American mouth has 5.5 grams of mercury in the form of mercury amalgam fillings.
This means that the average American has enough mercury in his/her mouth to pollute 157 acres of water. Recent air emission tests in Madison, WI documented that more mercury is released into the air in Dane County from crematoria than from any other source except a coal fired energy plant.
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