Pat O’Neill didn’t even know how long he had old paint cans and other hazardous materials stored in his garage, but he was glad to finally dispose of those items Saturday morning.

“I just wanted to get rid of this stuff properly, get it out of my garage,” O’Neill said as volunteers from Westmoreland Cleanways lugged out the 540 pounds of materials from the back of his pickup during the first of two scheduled days earmarked for collection of items typically not to be dumped into a landfill.

Cars and trucks passed through every couple of minutes at Westmoreland Cleanways’ new warehouse complex on eight acres in Pleasant Unity to dispose of paints, fertilizers, gasoline, cleaning chemicals and other household supplies deemed hazardous or toxic.

Westmoreland Cleanways Executive Director Ellen Keefe said the organization weeks ago filled up all 180 available time slots for Saturday’s four-hour collection so quickly a second event was scheduled for Nov. 21 — which has also filled all available time slots. An earlier event had been scheduled for last spring but was postponed because of the early surge of the coronavirus.

“Disposing of these hazardous materials is extremely difficult, and there’s no permanent dropoff, so people have to do it during these special collections,” Keefe said. “We’re hoping that now we’re in this new space, we will have it more frequently.”

Customers were charged 85 cents for each pound of materials they brought. O’Neill paid $459 to finally get his old paint and other items left over from home renovation projects years ago out of his garage.

Keefe said money earned from the collection is expected to cover about half of the $25,000 cost of the event. The remaining half of the expense will be paid for through state grants, she said.

“Some of this stuff we’re getting is 40 to 50 years old,” Keefe said.

ECS&R, a hazardous materials recycling firm based in Crawford County, operated Saturday’s collection. Materials were sorted and stored separately to later be recycled, company supervisor Steve Shaw said.

“We do about three collections every Saturday,” Shaw said. “We take old gas, old pesticides and other flammables, consolidate them into a material that is used as fuel.”

Westmoreland Cleanways volunteers manned two lines as cars drove into adjoining warehouse buildings to drop off their hazardous materials.

Brian Foley of Latrobe dropped off paint, weed killers and old engine coolant he no longer uses.

“We recycle pretty religiously with anything we can possibly recycle because landfills are getting too filled up with stuff that stays around forever,” Foley said. “When you can consent to something this, it makes sense to do it.”

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