Blooze
Established
So, I find myself in a quandary that I now live in an area of the country that has no household hazardous waste disposal site and I have a septic tank. Anyone have any suggestions as to what I might be able to do? I'm about a 90 min drive from Oklahoma City or Dallas, but typically non residents of the city can't drop off.
charjohncarter
Veteran
I would be interested to hear from some of you environmentalist. Before I closed down my darkroom in 2003 the only chemical was used fixer (silver) that had to be treated at disposal centers. And I would expect that there are methods to home handle this used fixer too. Maybe even let it evaporate and once a year take it to a reclaiming center
sepiareverb
genius and moron
It all comes down to volume. There is a small scale silver recovery unit available to keep the silver out if you wish.
Bill Clark
Veteran
I'd recommend to be careful with a septic system as there are various bacteria working breaking down the solid waste that might be killed with photography chemicals. Then you'd be knee deep or higher with do-do.
http://inspectapedia.com/septic/Septic_System_Chemicals_to_Avoid.php
http://inspectapedia.com/septic/Septic_System_Chemicals_to_Avoid.php
mcfingon
Western Australia
I've been putting ordinary black and white chemicals in my septic tanks since 1980 and I've largely avoided swimming in effluent.
sdotkling
Sent through the ether
Been worrying about this myself lately. Assuming that developer and stop bath are pretty innocuous, consider filling a 60-gallon drum with cat litter and pouring your old fixer into it. Once a year, knock the drum over, rake out the cat litter to let it dry, then shovel it back into the drum to be used for another year. After a decade, drag it to a waste disposal facility.
Graybeard
Longtime IIIf User
The worst offender is spent fixer. Silver is a potent germicide and will upset the functioning of a septic tank. You might allow the spent fixer to evaporate and dispose of the solids with household trash in a sanitary landfill.
There is also the option of treating the spent fixer by contacting the liquid with steel wool to strip the silver by galvanic displacement.
Minimize the amount of fixer waste that you generate by keeping a usage log and using the solution to its full capacity and/or use a potassium iodide spot test solution to determine when it is time to discard the used fixer.
For film developers use the phenidone/ascorbate type or the D76 variant without the hydroquinone. You can avoid the "sudden death" problems with Xtol or Mytol by making the developer up from the components immediately before use - this is very simple to do.
For paper developers, consider the metol/ascorbate types. The quantity of metol going into you septic tank would be small and unlikely to upset the septic tank ecology in the amounts a private individual would discard. Again, make this up before you use it to avoid the ascorbate oxidation problems.
ProSimex
Member
pitch it out the window
Blooze
Established
Yeah, because the two ponds across the road from me would love that.
x-ray
Veteran
Stop bath is acetic acid (vinegar) so just mix it with baking soda or washing soda until it stops foaming and wash down the drain or pour it in the yard. The soda neutralizes the acid.
For fixer, put your spent fixer in a 5 gallon plastic paint bucket like comes from Home Depot and toss in a bunch of steel wool. The steel wool allows the metallic silver to collect on it and when you've collected several years of silver send it to a processing facility. This is how the silver recovery cartridges work. Pour off the liquid and neutralize with washing or baking soda and dump down the drain or in the back yard. The components in regular fixer aren't toxic.
Developer I'd put in a tray and let the liquid evaporate and when you collect enough put it in the trash. Developer isn't particularly toxic unless you're using pyro.
For fixer, put your spent fixer in a 5 gallon plastic paint bucket like comes from Home Depot and toss in a bunch of steel wool. The steel wool allows the metallic silver to collect on it and when you've collected several years of silver send it to a processing facility. This is how the silver recovery cartridges work. Pour off the liquid and neutralize with washing or baking soda and dump down the drain or in the back yard. The components in regular fixer aren't toxic.
Developer I'd put in a tray and let the liquid evaporate and when you collect enough put it in the trash. Developer isn't particularly toxic unless you're using pyro.
ruby.monkey
Veteran
Unless you're developing for everyone in the county, those two ponds won't feel any effect.
If you're really concerned, add a cesspit and worry about having it emptied in about a decade from now.
Graybeard
Longtime IIIf User
That is overkill on an acetic acid stop bath, just send it down the drain. It is too weak an acid to upset anything; no worse that if you were to put some orange juice don your sink.
x-ray
Veteran
I know but he asked and I sad how to neutralize it. All of it can go down the drain without problems or dump in the corner of the back yard. Nothing there that's really toxic. Silver has value and should stay out of the water supply but how much will he be using? It no big deal to dump it all.
sepiareverb
genius and moron
I ran an active darkroom (3-4x a week) on a septic tank for more than a decade, without any trouble. Just have the tank pumped more often, and if you are very concerned about the silver do silver recovery, via x-ray's method or with a small scale unit like a Silver Magnet. As stated, most of the chemicals you could use are not terribly toxic, especially when mixed with the volumes of water that are involved in a regular workflow, and the volumes of s**t from a normal household.
Freakscene
Obscure member
Pyrogallol is no more toxic than hydroquinone. The most environmentally toxic components in B&W processing chemicals are borates, which a lot of freswater algae are very sensitive to.
The concentrations of silver are very low, and unlikely to harm anything. Gram positive bacteria, which comprise the majority of bacteria in septic systems, are much less sensitive to silver than gram negative bacteria. In a septic tank, unless you are developing thounsands of rolls a week and only have one person in the house, the effect would be negligible. Even in that scenario, you would be needing to have your system emptied often enough that the silver would, for the most part, be removed.
Marty
Last edited:
maddoc
... likes film again.
Could you give some information on this? It would be very interesting to use some variation of XTOL.
Blooze
Established
Thank you everyone for the suggestions. I only develop maybe 60 or so rolls a year and usually one at a time, although I just took a trip and have about 30 rolls waiting.. I think if I do them one at a time I could just evaporate them in the 100F sun here in nowhere Oklahoma.
Graybeard
Longtime IIIf User
You will need an inexpensive digital scale (eBay USD10-15) and a measuring pipette or syringe.
The recipe for "Mytol", a popular Xtol clone is:
Water 750ml
Sodium sulfite (anhydrous) 85g
Sodium metaborate 4g
Sodium metabisulfite 3g
Phenidone 150 MILLIGRAMS
Sodium ascorbate 12 g
Artcraft is a good source of these materials.
Make up a solution of phenidone in propylene glycol using 1 gram of phenidone to 100 milliters of propylene glycol. The phenidone is slow to go into solution and it helps to warm the propylene glycol by putting your PG container in some hot water. Measure out 15 ml of the solution to get the 150 milligrams needed. Keep the phenidone solution in a refrigerator, it lasts an very long time.
Mix the Mytol components and use immediately, just as you would use Xtol. I use the 1:1 dilution as a one shot developer with a 15% increase in development time over the published times for Tri-x at ASA400.
You can also make up a stock solution of the first three components which will store well and just add the phenidone and sodium ascorbate immediately before use.
The is abundant information on Mytol available on the web.
Dogman
Veteran
Don't over think it. While you shouldn't drink modern photography chemicals, they're not that dangerous. That's not to say there aren't some chemicals you can use for photographic purposes that's not dangerous, but they're not that typical. Some of the old processes used some nasty stuff. Mercury comes to mind.
Unless you're running huge amounts frequently, your septic system will not see any harm from the typical hobbyist's use of photo chemicals. In years past, I've lived in a rural area with a septic tank while using a home darkroom. Like others have responded, there were no ill effects. The bacteria in the septic system would be more likely affected by household bleach, disinfectant cleaners and such. And even these products would have to be used in large quantities before they would hurt the septic system.