Free Range Nuclear Waste

One thing that has always puzzled me about hazmat and recycling comes to waste that is mineral in nature. I have some Lithium batteries I work with. When they go bad, I have to send them through Hazardous Material (hazmat) for disposal. Now here is the quandary – where does lithium come from? The ground, right? So if I toss the battery in the landfill, am I not putting it right back where it came from? Does a hazmat team have to be on hand when they mine the stuff? Since it is hazmat what do the hazmat pogues do with it once I give it to them? I’ll bet they pitch it into a dumpster behind the shop.
The same goes for petroleum products such as old motor oil for instance. Definitely came out of the ground, so if I pour the waste oil from my car on my neighbor’s yard (no worries, the dude is a dick) no problem right? It soaks back in and goes back to being oil in the ground. Heck maybe someday someone will discover the new pocket of oil beneath my neighbor’s house and knock the house down to get at the oil. Bonus, more petroleum and my neighbor the dick is out of what little hair I have. It is win – win situation!
When I was in Clovis, NM they had an interesting garbage disposal system. Clem would load all the trash in the back of his open pickup truck and then hit the highway at about 80MPH. By the time he returned home, the garbage had vanished. He might have to make two or three trips to shovel out his luxury trailer house, but by gosh he got rid of the trash. It did not affect the taxpayer, oddly enough, because as far as I could tell no one ever picked trash along the highway.
Here in El Mirage, there is no recycling as such. There is garbage collection and I think they just dump their collection in the middle of town somewhere – no one would notice, believe me. I think recycling and the hazmat programs are important, but I wish the government or recycling companies would make it easier. There is no hazmat pick up for instance. You have to wait to take your out of date nerve gas, lithium batteries and old super grow fertilizer to a special drop off that only happens rarely. You know people are saying, “Screw it” and tossing the waste from their Meth lab straight into their trash can. If you want people to recycle and treat certain substances with special care, you have to make it as easy as possible or it ain’t gonna happen.
I was able to get rid of the old weed killer this past winter by pouring it on my neighbors vine – the one that keeps growing over the wall into my yard. It does a good simulation of “frost damage”. Now what to do with that stack of tires that won’t fit in the grill.