Construction Begins to Expand Household Hazardous Waste Facility, Closes Swap & Shop Temporarily

(Sedgwick County, Kan.) – Construction began today to double the size of Sedgwick County’s Household Hazardous Waste (HHW) Facility at 801 Stillwell, Wichita, and to add parking on the east side. The $1.9 million expansion is needed to handle the huge growth in customer usage and to facilitate tours and school field trips in the future. The extra space will provide:

• More room for storage of hazardous waste
• Safer areas for staff to sort materials
• Space for tours and field trips
• Designated room for employee training and presentations
• Children’s area in the Swap & Shop area, with books and TV

For safety reasons, the Swap & Shop is now closed during this first phase of construction, until at least December 2024. At that time, the shell of the new building should be complete, and the Swap & Shop can resume normal operations. Interior work on the expansion will then continue until Feb. 2025. Watch for construction updates on Sedgwick County’s website.

Throughout construction, customers can continue to drop off hazardous materials at HHW. Signs and orange cones will direct traffic to the south gate entrance ONLY. Click here for a map of the traffic flow.

When HHW first opened in 2002, customers dropped off nearly 400,000 pounds of leftover or unused household chemicals, cleaners and other hazardous materials for safe disposal. That amount increased to almost 1.8 million pounds in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic and leveled off to a more typical annual rate around 1.3 million pounds in 2022. Likewise, more customers now use the Swap & Shop, taking home up to 10 free items per month, including paint, varnish, aerosols, pool chemicals, motor oil, cleaning chemicals and much more. In 2022, nearly 10,000 customers reclaimed 327,109 pounds of products and saved Sedgwick County $72,942 in disposal costs.

For more information, contact the Sedgwick County Household Hazardous Waste Facility at 316-660-7464 or visit https://www.sedgwickcounty.org/environment/household-hazardous-waste-facility/.

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