Kane County reports surge in home hazardous-waste pickups; 2024 Naperville drop-off handled 135,000 pounds from county residents

Kane County staff reported an increase in household hazardous-waste activity in 2024, including larger-than-usual volumes at the Naperville drop-off site and a significant rise in the county’s home pickup service.

Ms. Claire Ryan, who presented the program update, told the Energy & Environmental Committee that county residents made 2,386 drop-off visits to the Naperville facility in 2024 — roughly 11% of the site’s total visits — and disposed of about 135,000 pounds of material. Ryan used a vehicle analogy to describe the weight: "the equivalent weight of 4 large school buses," she said.

Ryan said the county’s home pickup program logged 468 uses in 2024, a 44% increase over 2023, with nearly 30,000 pounds collected. She noted that 37% of that material was recycled and 63% incinerated; the largest-by-weight category was fertilizer and pesticide products, which comprised 60% of the total weight and 94% of all material sent for incineration.

"The number 2 material collected was latex paint, about 27% of all material by weight, and then 74% of all the material that was recycled was latex paint," Ryan said. She told the committee that the mix of materials people discard — large bags of fertilizer or partly used cans of paint when people move, for example — drives the recycling/incineration split and affects program costs.

Ryan also described partnerships and collection options: the county subsidizes access to the regional Naperville site; a Geneva ACE Hardware store accepts fluorescent tubes and LEDs for recycling; select municipalities run on-call or periodic local collections; and some areas are eligible for home pickup once per year with a 70-pound weight limit (latex paint excluded from that limit).

Committee members discussed program capacity and outreach. Mr. Roth asked whether the ACE arrangement could be expanded to other franchise locations; Ryan said the Geneva store arrangement began as a trial with the store manager and that franchising structure complicates a simple roll-out but that it could be explored. A county representative noted the program was monitoring invoices closely after the surge in pickups to avoid budget overruns.

Ryan also highlighted battery and bulb collections: county events and a Geneva ACE drop-off together yielded thousands of bulbs and several tons of batteries; Ryan said the county collected 805 LED bulbs and that LED volumes are rising annually.