Disposing of dark room chems, London

[nikc]

Hi everyone,

I recently moved to London. In Helsinki, where I moved from, I had a dark room at my disposal, where I never had to worry about chemical disposal. The club I was a member of took care of that.

I've been lazily trying to find out where and how I could get rid of spent chemicals over here, without much luck. One of my problems being I'm bound by public transport and cycling, so I would prefer a service that collects.

Alternatively, maybe even preferably, I would gladly hear about (affordable) dark room space for rent that provides this service.

 

[AgX]

Get yourself a bike trailer. It is no problem transporting 30L or a professional enlarger by bike.

 

[pentaxuser]

In terms of "normal" chemicals such as developer and fixer then unless the local water company( Thames Water, I think) has different standards from most of the others in the U.K. then washed down with tap water, the chemicals I have mentioned do not concern the Water Authorities when it is the output of a home darkroom.

The best route is to contact your local Water Authority. They are the custodians of the rules in your area. The rest of us can only give opinions which might be wrong.

Others in the London area might know of darkrooms but if not check the Harman Technology site. It was compiling a list of local darkrooms by area in the U.K.


pentaxuser

 

[Ian Grant]

It's assumed that it goes to the drain once the fixer has been de-silvered from amateur darkrooms.

Part of my job until about 12 years ago was liaising with water boards with regards to chemical waste disposal from Minilabs, I was in contact with the chief chemist for Thames Water (London area) and there were no issues discharging to the sewers provided there was no silver content, they needed a letter of consent rather than a license as the volumes were low, a home darkroom is even lower volumes.

Ian

 

[nikc]

once the fixer has been de-silvered from amateur darkrooms

How does one de-silver fixer? A very fine mesh?

 

[Ian Grant]

How does one de-silver fixer? A very fine mesh?

Plate it out, or drop it out using zinc powder.

If you don't pour solutions down the drain all you're doing is paying someone else to do it. We made a lot of money collecting spent dev and blix, from minilabs, fix from Xray machines eetc and literally pouring it down the drain after desilvering the blix or fixer.

Actually the water boards would rather small quantities are disposed of locally rather than in bulk as there's far higher dilution.

Ian

 

[Andrew O'Neill]

Dump your spent chemicals in a bucket and let it evaporate. I kept a couple of large buckets on my balcony when I lived in Japan. Before moving back to Canada, I took the bucket of sludge (and other junk) to a waste disposal facility.

 

[nikc]

Actually the water boards would rather small quantities are disposed of locally rather than in bulk as there's far higher dilution.

Hmm... Fair point.

Dump your spent chemicals in a bucket and let it evaporate. I kept a couple of large buckets on my balcony when I lived in Japan. Before moving back to Canada, I took the bucket of sludge (and other junk) to a waste disposal facility.

That's an interesting idea.

 

[Michael W]

I've heard good things about Photofusion in Brixton as a community darkroom.

For home darkroom, I think you are fine to pour used dev, stop and hypo clear down the drain. For used fix, unless you can do silver recovery, I would look for a local lab that might let drop your fix off. If they have a recovery unit, which they should have, then you are essentially donating silver to them so they shouldn't charge you anything.

 

[Agulliver]

As others have said, and as far as I am aware, UK water companies are fine with home darkroom quantities of any "normal" photo chemicals being washed down the drain.

Here is some advice from Ilford "Amateur and home users in the UK should dispose of small amounts of used photographic processing solutions by dilution with plenty of water and washing them down the drain. Do not mix solutions. It is not advisable to dispose of photographic chemicals to a septic tank."

http://www.ilfordphoto.com/healthandsafety/page.asp?n=163

 

[naxxfish]

I've also looked into this recently - in my particular borough, the council uses the City of London to do their hazardous waste collection, however chemicals need to be in their original containers. I came to the conclusion this would only apply for undiluted chemicals not made up solutions. And then slightly tangentically, Wolfson College say that Thames Water allow them to discharge diluted chemicals in small volumes , which further backs up all of the above.

Having said that, if you want to hire darkroom in London there are plenty, the most affordable I think might be Photofusion. London Hack Space also has a dark room (currently!)