 Hello and welcome to the Fort Report. I'm Chris Connolly. I'm here at Fort Worth's Environmental Collection Center talking about hazardous waste and dangerous chemicals commonly found throughout the city. I'm with senior environmental specialist David Leonardo Witts. David what are some things people need to know? I mean I don't think in my house is being particularly hazardous but I'm finding some stuff in the garage that probably shouldn't be there. What am I supposed to do? Well it's really important that we bring all of our waste to the Environmental Collection Center because this stuff ends up in the landfills and people don't realize it ends up eating through the liners on the landfills and it's a better for the environment for it to come here. We can dispose of it properly then eventually getting into the water table and affecting all of our drinking water. Who gets to bring it up here? Well we take the chemical waste from any citizen of the city of Fort Worth. We also have several participating cities. We have about 50 cities that participate in our program and if someone wants to look on the website to see if their city participates in our program they can do that. So I've loaded this stuff in my car or truck carefully obviously. I bring it up here. What do I do when I get here? The important thing is that you stay inside of your vehicle and you bring your water bill or your driver's license and we'll do the rest for you. We completely unload it and we do prefer that people don't bring black bags. We prefer that you put it upright inside of a box and make sure that the lids are on securely and it's not going to tip over during transport. We also ask that people put non-conductive tape on all the batteries on the positive and negative terminals whenever they bring those in as well. David what are some typical items that folks bring up here? Well I would say that our largest waste room would definitely be paint but we also take any chemical that you can buy for your household use. We'll take automotive fluids, cooking oil, batteries and light bulbs. We also bring in paint, lawn, garden and pool chemicals, cleaning supplies and medicines. What do you guys do with that stuff? Well it depends on what it is. There's a large segment of things that we can recycle. A lot of it ends up being incinerated and then going to a secured landfill. And most importantly when people are doing this stuff at their house they need to be safe, right? Make sure you're wearing your personal protective equipment. Glasses and gloves are very very important. Keep yourself safe. Well David thanks so much for showing us what to do today. What are the hours when people come? We are open every Thursday and Friday from 11 to 7 and Saturdays from 9 o'clock till 3 o'clock. For more information you can call 817-392-EASY or visit the ECC's website online. Also if you can't make it to the ECC there is a way to get your household hazardous waste taken care of without making the trip. The Crud Cruiser is a mobile collection trailer that travels to neighborhoods to collect leftover household chemicals. The schedule for this year's events are posted on the Crud Cruiser's website.