The Kitty Litter Incident

still life with cat litter...

Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.
~Pablo Picasso

One hot and lazy day last week I got a call from my sister, who lives nearby. She had loaded our Dad's old brown truck [called the Edmobile] with some noxious yard waste unfit for the compost pile and a few items for the county dump and wondered if we had anything to add.

She and my niece motored over soon after, loaded up our items, and quickly took off for the county disposal and recycling facility at Hidden Valley. Projected time from pickup to return, about an hour.

When three hours had passed, I got a bit worried and phoned. "We just got back," my sister said tersely. "It was a disaster!!!"

Uh-oh.

A little while later, here they were, the Edmobile backed into the driveway and our stuff carefully being removed. The truck looked almost as full as when they left. "Did they take anything?" I asked.

"Yeah. The yard waste. But we had to remove it from the biodegradable bags -- all 400 pounds of it!!! They didn't take your stuff. But I had to remove all of it from the truck just to get to the yard waste. Then I had to put it back. And then we got the run-around. The head guy said there was no charge on the yard waste and we could go. So we left. But some clerk at the checkout building saw us drive past the scales without stopping and I could see her in the rear view mirror running after us screaming something. I didn't stop. Now, we might be fined!"

Oh, no.

"We stopped at the store and that's when we discovered one of your paint cans burst and dripped out -- all over the parking lot and the back end of the truck!!!" She could barely talk by now, she was just spitting mad.

Oh, no.

My niece stacked up our 15 gallon cans of old latex paint. "You have to mix this with kitty litter. They won't take it otherwise," she said. "We got you some at the store." She hauled out three 25 pound bags of the absolute cheapest bargain brand and leaned them against the stack of paint cans.

Yellow paint dripped from the bottom of each can from the spreading pool in the bed of the pickup. The gooey mess oozed off the edge of the tailgate and onto the bumper, before drip-drip-dripping onto the ground.

We scrambled to clean up. Newspapers, bags, sponges, warm soapy water in buckets and a plastic tarp soon appeared. My job was to haul the paint cans to the back yard and start the kitty litter process. The empty cans and kitty litter/dried paint could then go into our regular weekly garbage from home. There would be no need to repeat the humiliating exercise of driving through the disposal facility, only to be refused service.

An hour later, I had emptied five cans, used most of one bag of kitty litter, and had all the cans wiped and stacked. While I was busy with that, sis and niece emptied the truck, wiped up the paint, and rinsed some tools that had been splashed with paint. Hubby picked up all soiled rags and towels and packed the garbage can.

Whew! What a night that was -- never to be repeated, I hope. The moral of the story is twofold. One -- dispose of your old paint when you no longer need it and two -- phone your transfer station, disposal or recycle facility to find out exactly how they want certain items delivered to them. They definitely aren't all the same.

For example, at our other home we could bring all paints to the mobile toxic and hazardous waste collection area. We also had the opportunity to bring the materials to a permanent city facility. In both places, all materials got sorted by professionals and once the trunk was empty, we were allowed to be on our way.

However, this county does it differently. The non-hazardous materials can be properly conditioned and disposed of with regular garbage. The dangerous items need to be delivered directly to the toxic area of the facility only on certain days. There you can expect a long wait.

Now that we know, we won't repeat this clueless exercise. We also undoubtedly won't be discussing this event with any fondness around the dinner table at Christmas either.