Darien Household Hazardous Waste Day Is Saturday — Here’s What to Take

Your mercury thermometer is among the things to save for Darien’s Household Hazardous Waste Day, which takes place this Saturday, June 4.

You can trade in your mercury thermometer for a brand new digital thermometer that day (while supplies last), according to the announcement posted by the Department of Public Works.

Photo by Joe Mabel as posted on Wikimedia Commons

North Seattle Household Hazardous Waste Collection Facility, Seattle, Wash. (Photo by Joe Mabel as posted on Wikimedia Commons)

Here’s a sampling of what else you should be saving for the pickup, which takes place from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the south parking lot of Noroton Heights Railroad Station (normally pretty empty on a weekend anyway):

Toilet bowl and drain cleaners, oven cleaners, rug and upholstery cleaners, furniture, floor and metal polishes, paint strippers, lighter fluid, poisons, insecticides, rubber cement, airplane glue.

These are some of the items you can take to the Darien Transfer Station/Darien Recycling Center whenever it’s open — they’ve been collecting more and more things that can be recycled and will not be accepting these at the household hazardous waste drop-off:

Tires, dry cell (flashlight) batteries, motor oil, unbroken fluorescent lights, electronics and rechargable batteries.

Paint is another item not being collected this year — it’s another product that can be dropped off at the Darien Transfer Station/Darien Recycling Center.

For a long list of items being accepted and not being accepted at the pickup, see a copy of the announcement below or click here for the original PDF as posted on the town government website.

Entry to the pick-up site is from Hollow Tree Ridge Road (map below), and you can then leave by Ledge Road, past Darien EMS-Post 53, which brings you to Noroton Avenue.

The collection is only for households, not businesses. The town is charged per car coming into the site, so if you can double up with a neighbor, you’ll save the town a bit of tax money.

If you can’t make the pickup on June 4, Darien has an agreement with these towns where residents can go on their pickup days. Unfortunately, there’s no central list published anywhere so far this year, and some towns haven’t published their own date online yet (expect all that later this year).

These are the other towns that will accept hazardous waste from Darienites on their collection days: Greenwich, New Canaan, Norwalk, Stamford, Weston, Westport and Wilton.

Editor’s note: This article originally was published Jan. 19. The time stamp has been changed to put it back on the Home page, and again to put it at the top of the Darienite.com newsletter. And its been changed again on Friday, June 3, with a new time stamp and information added about drop-off days for other towns where Darien residents are allowed to go.