Why now is the time to clear toxic trash out of your home

“Nobody’s asking for that weird crap” may have become the go-to slogan of this election season, but if we’re being honest, it probably applies to a lot of the stuff sitting around your apartment, too.

We’re talking the harder-to-get-rid-of stuff like batteries, your pile of obsolete charging cords, fluorescent light bulbs, dead electronics, that half a can of paint leftover from the time you decided you needed an accent wall. The stuff that you’re actually not even allowed to put in the trash, either because it’s a potential biohazard or because it might start a fire, and that you normally have to schlep to far-flung weekly dropoff sites if you want to get rid of it.

There are very real safety reasons for not just sneakily slipping this stuff into your regular trash. Paint, for instance, sometimes contains chemicals that can contaminate soil and water if left in a regular landfill. And then there are lithium-ion batteries; you know, the same kind that have been causing dangerous e-bike fires in buildings across the city.

“Lithium-ion rechargeable batteries have become a bigger issue in the last few years,” Joshua Goodman, deputy commissioner of public affairs and customer experience at the New York City Department of Sanitation, told The Groove. “We’ve seen a big increase in fires in collection trucks and the back of facilities. We want to be very clear that those don’t go in the trash or recycling.” 

So, if you're looking to clear out precious space in your apartment without putting any sanitation workers' lives at risk, here's what you need to know to get this all done right now:

A once-a-year opportunity to purge

In the interest of safely getting all that stuff out of your apartment, DSNY is hosting a series of five SAFE (Solvents, Automotive, Flammables and Electronics) disposal events — one for each borough — starting this weekend in Queens. They do, in fact, want all your weird crap. These events only happen once per borough per year, Goodman said, meaning now is prime time to do a sweep of your apartment and get rid of all this stuff as painlessly as possible.

You can find the full rundown here, but the list of accepted products for these once-a-year events includes everything from antifreeze to your old laptop to thermostats to smaller-scale stuff you might not have known was an option for special disposal, like nail polish, e-cigs and vapes.

What are my other options?

If you can’t make any of the upcoming events and don’t want to schlep to one of the year-round drop-off sites, you do have other options. For electronics as well as items like rechargeable batteries, manufacturers of certain products are actually required by the state to offer “free and convenient” recycling options for their customers; a full list of those companies, which range from Amazon to Sony to Staples, and their tech recycling options, can be found here, and tend to be in the realm of in-store drop-off or free mailing labels that allow you to send your old stuff back.

For paint, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation launched a special paint recycling program back in 2022, with numerous drop-off locations (many of them at hardware stores) across the city. A searchable map of those locations can be found here.

(For the more regular-degular non-toxic donation fare like old furniture, clothes, and pantry items, Time Out and The Cut both have great comprehensive guides to unloading that stuff without having to put it in the trash.)

If all this feels like a lot of work to have to research the right way to get rid of literal garbage, just think of the smug satisfaction of having a properly cleared out apartment now that we’re in the productive-feeling frenzy of back-to-school season. Besides, this city’s got enough trash problems without worrying that yours might poison someone or burst into flames.