Sault Ste. Marie's household hazardous waste depot no longer accepts ballast resistors from old lighting fixtures, but Clean North says it's hearing from people who claim they've been advised by city staff to just throw them in the trash.
Many older lighting ballasts contain highly carcinogenic polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs).
"Ballasts are not collected under part of the lighting program that we work with.... So we are not able to accept them," Spencer Lavergne, the city's supervisor of waste management, told a meeting of the environmental monitoring committee on Thursday.
"I just know that we aren't able to accept them at the hazardous waste facility as we're not allowed to ship them out as part of the lighting program," Lavergne said.
"They're very specific on items that they do take and we aren't able to accept those. And we're not able to accept anything containing PCBs so I'm not aware of a process of how the public is to get to dispose of them, but we are not able to accept them under the hazardous waste program."
Peter McLarty, chair of the committee and vice-chair of the volunteer-run environmental group Clean North, pressed Lavergne on what Saultites should do with their old ballasts.
"They say when they contact [the city], he said put them in the garbage. Is that the official statement from the city?" McLarty asked.
He didn't get much of an answer.
"I don't have any official statement on that," Lavergne responded.
"If you want to direct anything to the minister of environment, we can answer any questions that they have."