Get the Facts - Don't Be Fooled Again!

As Sgt. Friday use to say on the old police show, Dragnet, "Just the facts, ma'am, just the facts", the same can be true today in dealing with your Hazardous Waste transporter. Get the facts!

The following is yet another report from the field of a shop owner being told something untrue by a commercial waste recycler. It's not at all uncommon - we hear reports all the time of such things.

A shop owner in the south was informed by his hazardous waste transporter that it was the state's intention to declare all spray booth filters to be hazardous waste, regardless of whether they had been subjected to TCLP testing. The shop owner didn't panic. Instead, he called us and repeated the conversation. I then made an inquiry with the folks that develop regulations for that state and found that the state had nothing on the boards that indicated any such thing.

Shop owners can often get information from so many different sources causing them to never know who to believe. It would not be stretching the truth to say that I know of many instances where commercial waste transporters have given shop owners some very incorrect information just to keep their business. Reports reach us on almost a daily basis. We've gotten phone calls from all over the US from collision repair folks trying to determine what is accurate and what is bogus with respect to waste management regulations.

While we are not singling out any particular hazardous waste management company, we DO have philosophical and professional objections to shop owners being told untruths, or given inaccurate information, in order for the commercial transporter to sustain a market and reach sales goals.

Daily shop management is difficult enough without being distrustful of the companies that support the collision repair industry. We encourage shop owners to call or e-mail us if they feel they are getting "snowed" by a waste management service provider. Our job is to equip shop managers with the ability to separate fact from fiction and make conscious waste management decisions.

Copyright © Tara L. Munro. All Rights Reserved.