Area II HAZMART offers free services - How can the HAZMART help you? (Part 1of a 2 part series)

Photo By Cpl. Jihoon Jung | Hazardous materials turned into Area II HAZMART are stacked in a storage cargo, waiting to take appropriate steps before being shipped. (U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Jung Jihoon)  

YONGSAN, 11, SOUTH KOREA

03.06.2014

Story by Cpl. Jihoon Jung 

U.S. Army Garrison Yongsan

YONGSAN GARRISON, Republic of Korea – The Yongsan Hazardous Material Control Center (offers many programs to help the community deal with hazardous waste and materials. To utilize it efficiently, it is essential for the community to understand the process.

One main function of ‘HAZMART’ is the free issuing market. The basic premise is to issue excess serviceable items (paint, engine oil, etc…) . These would be items that were turned-in to DPW by surrounding facilities.

Across the peninsula, each HAZMART provides monthly issue lists detailing the items available for issue. Anyone who turned-in an item to HAZMART is automatically registered to receive the inventory list of items.

Robin Gaines, USAG Yongsan DPW environmental protection specialist, emphasized the importance of making use of the free issue market.

“The whole theme of the free issue market is to give Yongsan community members an opportunity to save money and help each other out,” said Gaines. “We really need everybody’s participation in this. People with excess and usable items are strongly encouraged to visit HAZMART, and turn them in.”

Another area the HAZMART covers is antifreeze recycling. Old antifreeze is still very usable after going through the safe, correct process. HAZMART runs the antifreeze recycle system to lower costs for the community. The used antifreeze collected by HAZMART goes through the following process; filtration, chemical filtration, chemical filtration/oxidation, and centrifugal separation/filtration.

“The cost of recycling used antifreeze is only half the cost of buying a whole new drum of it,” Lester Billingsley, an employee at the Area II HAZMART. “A new drum of antifreeze costs more than two hundred dollars. Its quite important to make sure that wastes, capable of going through recycling, are done so.”

Finally, HAZMART also manages household hazardous waste and materials turn in. If community members have excess household items past their shelf-life, HAZMART offers an opportunity to dispose of them safely. Personnel living on post, in barracks or housings, to turn-in consumer quantities of products including cleansers, paints, engine oil, BBQ grill propane tanks, etc…)

HAZMART can also prolong the life of those household goods by extending overdue products following a thorough inspection. If the items pass inspection, then they go back on the shelf for further use by someone else. This process saves individuals money and helps clean up the community safely.

For more information, contact the Area II HAZMART at DSN 736-7318.

• Date Taken: 03.06.2014
• Date Posted: 03.25.2014 00:26
• Story ID: 122485
• Location: YONGSAN, 11, KR