How to Dispose of Car Coolants

Due to the potential for high lead content, you must take extra care to dispose of car coolants and antifreeze products properly. First, you must determine whether or not the coolants you want to dispose of are considered hazardous waste due to lead content, and then select a safe method of disposal, or recycle the car coolants.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Things You’ll Need:

• Antifreeze or coolant-content testing equipment
• Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) hazardous-waste transporter
• Antifreeze-disposal tank

Determine Whether Your Coolants Are Considered Hazardous Waste

1. Test each batch of coolant separately. Even if one batch isn't contaminated, others may be.
2. Contact your state's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to find the nearest laboratory where you can take your coolants for testing. You can find your local EPA at EPA.gov (see Resources below).
3. Submit each batch for testing and await the lab results.
4. Use your own process knowledge if you have an advanced understanding of coolants and antifreezes and you're confident that you can adequately explain your testing methods to EPA authorities. Refer to your coolants' Materials Safety Data Sheets (MSDS) as you run your own tests. If you lack advanced process knowledge, take the coolants to a lab.
5. Evaluate whether any coolant mixed with another form of hazardous waste, such as oil or gas, is contaminated. Also, if you drain the coolant from an old car that has been in storage for an extended period of time, you should assume the coolant has a high lead content. It is overwhelmingly likely that lead from the engine has seeped into the coolant fluid while the car has been sitting unused.

Dispose of Coolants Safely

6. Contact the EPA and acquire hazardous-material transport bins with identification numbers if you need to dispose of contaminated coolants or antifreeze fluids.
7. Take contaminated coolants and antifreeze to an EPA-endorsed recycling facility. You can find out where the nearest one is by contacting your state's EPA branch.
8. Take non-hazardous coolants to your local landfill if it has the proper authorization to dispose of them. Many landfills have specialized antifreeze-disposal tanks. If your landfill doesn't have one, you'll have to do some digging to find the nearest landfill that can accept your antifreeze waste.

Tips & Warnings

• Never dispose of used antifreeze by pouring it down the sewer, into the ground or down the drain. Used antifreeze can be highly contaminated, and you might unwittingly cause serious damage to your plumbing system, your municipality's sewer system or the environment if you dispose of coolants improperly.
• Do not pour used antifreeze into containers that have been used to store other chemicals or products, such as oil or gasoline, unless they have been thoroughly cleaned.