For heavy printers... How do you discard your chemical?

Hi there,

I am using more and more my lab and volume of used chemical is growing (almost!) exponentially.... So my question is to know what you do with your old liquid stuff , being developer, fixer or toner? Drain it? store it separately (but the volume can be quickly important) until you bring it to a waste collection event? Use the service of a waste management company?

Thanks in advance for your contribution!

I toss my developer and stop down the sink. I save my used fixer and I bring it work at a university art department with a photo lab. I dump it in their waste collection barrel.

I've used Safety Kleen since I lived in MA. They'll provide a drum and come pick it up either on a schedule or when you call. It's not cheap, but at least it's not just ending up in a septic tank, river, stream, etc... With mine, I think it's a 15 gallon drum and it takes me more than a year to fill it. I think it was around $300 last time?

At my county it is illegal to dump any used processing bath down the public drain.
I collect all in seperate 5L cans, labelled with resp. EU waste-codes, and bring them to the annual hazemat collection.

Everything depends on your actual volume and the regulations for your particular community. If your volume is still low enough to not be considered "commercial," then most places allow for smaller amounts of many chemicals to be disposed of into the sewer system. Developer and stop bath are usually among these, since they break down well or react to form neutral compounds in water treatment plants.

The silver in your used fixer is the real concern. By far the best solution for fixer (IM-HO) is to take it somewhere for silver recovery and subsequent disposal. I take my used fix to a local commercial photo lab for this. The problem with hazmat disposal is that they don't do the silver recovery, just send the fixer to be incinerated with a bunch of other hazardous chemicals; much less effective and more expensive. Some municipalities will allow you to dump small amounts of fixer into the sewer system. Most of this forms silver sulfate in the water treatment plant, which is very stable, so not a problem.

As for toners, I only use selenium toner, which I replenish and reuse, so no need to dispose of anything in that department for me. Others will chime in here with more information.

Bottom line, though, check with your local authorities and see what is required.

Best,

Doremus

Dali said:

Hi there,

I am using more and more my lab and volume of used chemical is growing (almost!) exponentially.... So my question is to know what you do with your old liquid stuff , being developer, fixer or toner? Drain it? store it separately (but the volume can be quickly important) until you bring it to a waste collection event? Use the service of a waste management company?

Thanks in advance for your contribution!

Click to expand...

I pour my used fixer into a large brown glass carboy and then pour in as much 'not fully dead' developer as I can, cap it and 'shake'. it is place under my bench sand given the occasional shake-up And again put 'to 'rest' until there is a 'deposit' of the purest form of silver.. ie "black" silver. I then syphon off the liquid until the 'space' therein is used for the next aliquot of used developer to which 'partially used fixer is added... and so on. The precipitate will then be 'washed' with clean water a few times, allowed to settle, is then filtered, allowed to dry and eventually goes 'out the door' for 'recycling'... much better than into the city's sewage system

Ken

Doremus Scudder said:

Everything depends on your actual volume and the regulations for your particular community. If your volume is still low enough to not be considered "commercial," then most places allow for smaller amounts of many chemicals to be disposed of into the sewer system. Developer and stop bath are usually among these, since they break down well or react to form neutral compounds in water treatment plants.

The silver in your used fixer is the real concern. By far the best solution for fixer (IM-HO) is to take it somewhere for silver recovery and subsequent disposal. I take my used fix to a local commercial photo lab for this. The problem with hazmat disposal is that they don't do the silver recovery, just send the fixer to be incinerated with a bunch of other hazardous chemicals; much less effective and more expensive. Some municipalities will allow you to dump small amounts of fixer into the sewer system. Most of this forms silver sulfate in the water treatment plant, which is very stable, so not a problem.

As for toners, I only use selenium toner, which I replenish and reuse, so no need to dispose of anything in that department for me. Others will chime in here with more information.

Bottom line, though, check with your local authorities and see what is required.

Best,

Doremus

Click to expand...

Does anyone, who actually knows, what is considered too much dev/ss/fix to be sent down a muncipal collection system (not talking about septic tank, etc)? 1 liter/5 liters/10 liters/ 50 liters/100 liters. It does make a difference and it probably is going into a system that already has much worse chemicals from washing machines and then like. In our city, businesses are told which and how much can be disposed down the sewer via toilets. I don't think the small amounts from the small number of home darkrooms that now exist in the USA are a real danger when diluted with the large amounts of other fluids that they are mixed with. Might this be one place to look for realism, not just in our pictures. Where I live, we don't have water shortages, usually just the opposite and our rules should not be the same as the rules for the desert Southwest.......Regards!

Use silver recovery on fixer. Then mix with the used developer so they pretty much neutralize each other. Same with stop bath - though that goes down the drain like rinsing vinegarette salad dressings.

Selenium toner that is old I put in a jar, screen on top and let the water evaporate. After a few years take it to the hazardous waste free dump day.

Or, put your chemistry in a container, wrap with party wrapping and a ribbon - ride the subway and turn the other way and it gets stolen.

Arklatexian said:

Does anyone, who actually knows, what is considered too much dev/ss/fix to be sent down a muncipal collection system...

Click to expand...

Well, yeah, I know something about this, but... (in the US) it depends strictly on your local regulations. As a single user, you don't have any chance of "overstressing" your local water treatment plant. But... you may be restricted by the regulations. So you have to read them to know.

Here's how it works, generally, in the US. Your local municipality has a set of laws regarding what, specifically, users can put down the sewer. If you are a commercial user you generally need to have a "permit" which specifies the pertinent details, including how your effluent will be monitored, and specifically what for. For a photofinisher this will typically give values for "BOD" and "COD" (these are "oxygen demand" values; your developing agents, preservatives, and fixers consume oxygen as they are degraded) as well as a silver limit. The silver limit is probably gonna be in the range of several milligrams per liter to as low as one or two tenths of a milligram. I know what it takes to get down to a couple tenths of a milligram, and you have basically no chance of getting that low (without dilution, which is not permissible).

However, almost all of the municipal regs have a "small user" exemption, perhaps a couple hundred gallons per month, or so, where they basically don't see it as worth their trouble. And probably individual (non-commercial) users are not regulated at all, beyond the standard restrictions of no flammable liquids, or things that could endanger sewer workers, etc.

Your local POTW (publicly owned treatment works) is strictly regulated by the EPA, and unless the POTW is approaching any sort of limit, it's doubtful that your municipality will change any of their regs. Unless your area is loaded with badly behaved photofinishers, I can't imagine that silver will ever be a concern to them. As a note, about the only person I recall seeing on this site who is knowledgeable about the silver situation is user Maris; however he is not from the US.

Anyway, bottom line is that, in the US, you should look at your local regs. Personally, I would suggest that anyone who does any significant amount of processing should try to get their hands on at least some of their waste silver. A good place to start would be to use a two-stage fixer (this helps concentrate the silver in the first stage, AND reduces the carryover to wash water), and use some sort of silver recovery system. One of the members here, John Nanian is a dealer for the "Silver Magnet," a small electrolytic unit, and is probably the most sensible thing to use for many people here. Even if it takes them upwards of a half-dozen years to collect enough to be worth sending it in.

Ps, the sort of effluent I'm talking about is the mainstream sort of photofinishing material, not various toners or off-wall-developing agents, etc.

In Illinois there are several permanent locations for household chemical waste. I use one in Chicago that is open on Tuesday mornings, Thursday afternoons and some Saturdays. I would not be surprised if a similar site was available near Philadelphia.

Good luck,

Neal Wydra

Dali said:

Hi there,

I am using more and more my lab and volume of used chemical is growing (almost!) exponentially.... So my question is to know what you do with your old liquid stuff , being developer, fixer or toner? Drain it? store it separately (but the volume can be quickly important) until you bring it to a waste collection event? Use the service of a waste management company?

Thanks in advance for your contribution!

Click to expand...

I pore them together and bring it to the haz waste collection once a fortnight.

dali

it all depends what your local authorities say you have to do .. some places let you
mix the dev stop fixrem together and dilute it with a sink of tap water. its sometimes the PH they
worry about... i hesitate to say anything about silver reclamation because i don't want to seem like
a used car salesman ... but electrolytic systems will still leave you with silver in your tailings. it can only
remove a certain amount. ion transfer ( with a reactive metal ) can get you down below 1 part per million ...
the other thing about electrolytic systems is the fixer has to be at least 50-52 parts/million so it can't be
1 shot or use a few times until the hypo check drops say it is spent .. you have to do either a litmus paper type
test or a clip test ( or somethng similar ) to determine what you have ... the ion transfer stuff works on wash water too,
( any concentration of silver, 1 shot, heavy spent &c ) and typically are gravity fed and a no brainer to use .. ( they cost more too )

good luck !
john

As others have already said it depends on "the man". As a single user you will never over stress your local municipal waste treatment plant. My town of 100,000 processes 17 million gallons of waste water every day. Much of it from industries far more polluting than I can ever hope to accomplish. Developers, stop baths, wash water can just go down the drain (again check with your local authorities!). Fixer, in hobby capacities, is also OK down the drain where I live. Toners, etc. I put into a large open tub and evaporate, so that I am only dealing with the solids (you could do the same with fixer). The solids go out to the recycling "farm" for disposal, tub and all. If you are on a septic system, small town waste water system, or a rural waste water system the rules must be very much more stringent.

Here's the current regulation discarding silver based process waste into the sewage system in germany:

https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/abwv/anhang_53.html

Check with your local municipal provider for details of implementation. For example, in some areas you need a permit when discarding into the sewer with a throughput of 200sqm+ of film/paper per year.

~andi said:

Here's the current regulation discarding silver based process waste into the sewage system in germany:

https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/abwv/anhang_53.html

Check with your local municipal provider for details of implementation. For example, in some areas you need a permit when discarding into the sewer with a throughput of 200sqm+ of film/paper per year.

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If my math is correct that's a lot of material for an amateur darkroom. An 8x10 is 80 square inches, 1550 sq inches in a square meter is about 19 8x10's x 200 is 3875 rolls and or prints. I am tired already.

Where I am located, personal use of photo chemistry can be dumped down the drain as long as you are hooked up to the municipal sewage system. I still would not dump spent fixer without treating it somehow. You would use a container with steel wool and let it sit for a couple days before dumping the fixer down the drain and turning in the steel wool on hazmat disposal days. Check with your local solid waste or sewage district for local rules and regulations. This might be a good place to start http://www.philadelphiastreets.com/hazardous-waste/.

Developer and stop go down the sink. My local college still has a darkroom ...(Saints Preserve Us)... so i bring my Fx there. Fortunately they are only 10, easy, miles away.
I would imagine the amount of Silver in a gallon of Fix is very slight.? If you are not near a safe disposal, you could pour it into a 5 Gallon Bucket and let the water evaporate until you can bring it some place appropriate.?

CMoore said:

I would imagine the amount of Silver in a gallon of Fix is very slight.?

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If you load it up at all, for film, it's probably got 2 or 3 grams per liter, although you could probably double that amount with a two-bath system. A gallon is nearly four liters (3.785 liters per US-style gallon), so say eight to twelve grams of silver - about 1/3 of a troy ounce. Current value (not what YOU could get for it, but the market price of silver) would be roughly $5 or $6. Lightly used fixer, perhaps about $1 or $2.

The only way(s) you would really know how much is in your fixer is to have some sort of chemical analysis done, or to know what the actual (recoverable) silver loading of your film is, and to track usage of the fixer (you'd need to consider the extra volume of the solution carryover from stop bath/water as well as the silver loss to wash water to have any precision). You could also use "silver estimating paper" for a rough idea if you are over a gram per liter, or so.

I personally don't get why people will go to such an effort to haul their used fixer somewhere for incineration, or to turn it into a gloppy mess with steel wool for a landfill when something as cheap as the "Silver Magnet" (I don't know the actual price) can turn most of the silver into nearly pure silver flake. Delivering the used fixer to someone else's recovery system at least keeps most of the silver "in play." It would be a different situation if the fixer silver were especially toxic, but it's not.

(Ps re: hauling fixer, etc., I should be clear that I'm talking about situations where the user is not being regulated by law)

~andi said:

Here's the current regulation discarding silver based process waste into the sewage system in germany:

https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/abwv/anhang_53.html

Click to expand...

Exclusion A (2) 3 is worded enigmatically, and my local authority engineer reads it as "no processing bath allowed at whatever volume".

AgX said:

Exclusion A (2) 3 is worded enigmatically, and my local authority engineer reads it as "no processing bath allowed at whatever volume".

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I think the passages you mention are very clear and I wonder how one could come to the conclusion "no processing bath allowed at whatever volume" :-O

It doesn't matter though. In the end what counts is how your local administration implements that regulation.

@darkroommike: 200sqm is a lot for hobby use. It doesn't free you from keeping the waste water within the upper limits of e.g. sliver-levels and the other parameters mentioned. I think the figure is to allow the local administration some leeway e.g. to exempt hobbyists from the need to obtain a (costly) permit. But that's speculation, of course. Maybe I'm going to ask next time I am at the city hall.

What is more environmentally damaging? Pouring fixer down the drain, or getting into a car and driving it down to a reclamation center?

fjpod said:

What is more environmentally damaging? Pouring fixer down the drain, or getting into a car and driving it down to a reclamation center?

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it doesn't matter
one is against the law one isn't.
( in someplace the laws are taken seriously ..
IDK 25+ years ago a local was fined 10,000$/day for 10days for not complying with the laws ... )

its best to find out what the laws are where you live...

fined $100k for dumping a liter of exhausted fixer down the drain every month or so? from a residential setting? Unlikely.

The silver?? ...is less than the silver that washes out of rocks and underground aquifers 24/7/365.

Don't get me wrong. I am an environmentalist... where it makes sense. Laws are important too. but they should be based on scientific fact.

fjpod said:

Don't get me wrong. I am an environmentalist... where it makes sense. Laws are important too. but they should be based on scientific fact.

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This is more or less what I had in mind when I asked to original question... Regulation is one thing, real impact on environment is another thing.

For the last few days, I got a full range of answers which clearly means that this is not "black and white".

fjpod said:

fined $100k for dumping a liter of exhausted fixer down the drain every month or so? from a residential setting? Unlikely.

The silver?? ...is less than the silver that washes out of rocks and underground aquifers 24/7/365.

Don't get me wrong. I am an environmentalist... where it makes sense. Laws are important too. but they should be based on scientific fact.

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it wasn't a litre, it was his loft studio ( commercial shooter ) and yes he was fined all that $$.
it hasnot a thing to do with what washes out of rocks in aquifers but what
the laws say. where i live used to have more electroplates than you can imagine
the costume jewelry capital of the world and the bay was a toxic waste dump. people dumped
their stuff down the drain for decades and it went into the bay, espeically if it rained
because like most cities that have street drains plugged into the municipal sewer system
when it rained it poured ...
dali, the reason why you got a slew of different answers is because
the local laws are typically stricter than the federal overlays and every place makes
its own local laws when it comes to waste disposal.