A hazardous waste drop-off weekend will take place today, tomorrow and Sunday at Tynes Bay Incinerator.

Waste items that are difficult to dispose of without harming the environment ? including acids, batteries, fertilisers, fluorescent tubes, household cleaners with a warning label, moth balls, paints, pesticides, pool chemicals, rat poison and weed killer ? can be dropped of for proper disposal on those days between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m.

?We urge the public to take advantage of this opportunity to get rid of all these products,? Waste Management Officer Clarkston Trott said.

?Twice a year we do this to try to keep toxins and bad chemicals out of the incinerator and landfills. Most hazardous waste material is difficult to dispose of, in Bermuda, in an environmentally acceptable way, and is therefore shipped to special hazardous waste processing plants in the United States.?

A permanent method of disposing hazardous waste has been operational since 1993, when the Government started a local programme to collect hazardous waste from both homes and businesses.

The twice-yearly drop-off is the other method of preventing the harmful chemicals from seeping into the ground.

The Sally Port Hazardous Waste Facility is a permanent facility where all local hazardous waste ?except for fluorescent tubes ? is taken, sorted and put into containers to be shipped abroad and this is where all of the machinery, equipment, tools, operational material and protective gear is stored.

?The drop-off this year is expected to capture about 15,000 pounds of hazardous waste materials,? Valerie Pethen of the Department of Communication said.