LAPLACE — For the 21st consecutive year, St. Charles and St. John the Baptist Parishes industries will host the annual Household Hazardous Materials Collection Day from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday at the New Wine Christian Fellowship parking lot in LaPlace.

St. James Parish, Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality and Louisiana Department of Agriculture & Forestry are also supporting the event. The goal is to provide households an opportunity to properly dispose or recycle materials that are inappropriate for curbside pickup.

Event coordinators include Lance Traylor and Jay Lambremont with Marathon Petroleum Company, Lynette Currier with OxyChem – Taft, Durrell Morris with Valero – St. Charles and Michael McNally with Shell – Norco are the event coordinators for local industries sponsoring the event.

As she encourages each year, Lynette Currier said, “Please mark your calendar and plan to attend this annual event! We have two locations: One in St. Charles Parish on the East Bank in Destrehan and another in St. John the Baptist Parish on the East Bank. We urge everyone to take advantage of this opportunity. Please clean out hazardous materials from your garage, utility room or shed and properly dispose of  these wastes on May 4 at one of these two available sites.”

The collection locations are in St. John the Baptist Parish at the Plaza LaPlace Shopping Center at 1921 Airline Highway in LaPlace, known as the New Wine Ministries parking lot and in St. Charles in Destrehan at the Jerusalem Shriners parking lot, located at 1940 Ormond Blvd.

Lance Traylor explained, “We are looking forward to collecting household hazardous materials from our community again this year. Please visit the event website for event details and ongoing recycling opportunities at hhmcd.com.”

He continued, “At last year’s Household Hazardous Materials Collection event, with 64 volunteers, we collected over 81,000 pounds — nearly 41 tons — of potentially harmful materials and prepared them for recycling, recovery, treatment or disposal. We unloaded materials from 560 vehicles at both locations.”

According to statistics gathered, the largest recycling category was 16,884 pounds of used electronics and 8,843 pounds of oil/antifreeze was collected to be recycled.

What’s accepted

The following household hazardous materials will be accepted and properly disposed of or recycled:

• Oil-based paint, solvents, tires (limit five per vehicle and one delivery only), automotive and other rechargeable batteries,

• Household cleaning products, acids/bases, used oil, antifreeze, aerosol cans, fluorescent lamps, pesticides, herbicides, scrap metal, major appliances and used electronics, such as used computers,

• Copiers, printers, radios, TVs and other electronic devices.  We cannot accept explosives, ammunition, infectious medical wastes,

• Unidentifiable materials, compressed gas cylinders (including propane tanks), radioactive wastes (smoke alarms), asbestos, latex paint, high school lab wastes or commercial/governmental facility waste, including in-home business waste.

There is a limit of five tires per vehicle.

With support from Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, this event is sponsored by the following 26 local companies as a community service: Air Liquide, Air Products (multiple locations in three parishes), Arkema, Bayer (formerly Monsanto), Cornerstone Chemical Company, Denka Performance Elastomer, Diamond Green Diesel, Dow, DuPont, Entergy, Evonik Corporation (two locations in St. John the Baptist Parish), Grace, Hexion, Linde (formerly Praxair) MPLX (formerly Pin Oak Terminals), Marathon Petroleum Company, Nalco Champion – an Ecolab Company, Noranda, Nucor, OxyChem, Shell – Norco, Shell Pipeline Company and Valero – St. Charles.

In addition to these sponsor companies, United Way of St. Charles and St. John United Way are serving as fiscal agents for this annual event.