How to Dispose of Printmaking Chemicals in Canada

What to take away

A litre of spent ferric chloride stays a household quantity until it hits a studio sink, where it becomes a discharge covered by a municipal sewer use bylaw.

Who regulates printmaking waste in Canada

No single Canadian body handles disposal for a small studio. Environment and Climate Change Canada administers the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, which covers toxic substances and hazardous waste crossing borders.

Your municipality writes the sewer use bylaw that governs the drain. Your province writes the environmental protection act that governs ground and air, and funds collection through a stewardship program: British Columbia's Environmental Management Act, Ontario's Environmental Protection Act and Quebec's Environment Quality Act are the three a small studio is most likely to meet. Health Canada's chemical substances pages explain how a substance is scheduled as toxic, which is the list provincial rules lean on.

British Columbia runs household hazardous waste collection as an industry program funded by eco fees and operated by Product Care, so paint, solvent and flammable drop-offs are free to households there. Ontario splits the job: the Resource Productivity and Recovery Authority oversees producer-run collection, and the depots themselves are mostly municipal transfer stations and household hazardous waste sites. To find the one nearest you, check your municipality's recycling or public works page, or the depot list published by the stewardship program for your province. Storage between drop-offs is a workspace problem as much as a legal one, and it is one a printmaking workspace has to solve.

What a studio may and may not pour

Water based cleanup from block printing and screen printing often may go to the drain in small amounts, and even then many municipalities ask you to settle the solids and bin the sludge. Solvents, etchants and photo chemistry may not, whatever the volume.

Ink formulation decides the route. Printing inks sold as water based clean up with soap and water, while oil based ones need solvent that must be collected rather than rinsed. Rinse water from cyanotype work is the awkward middle case. Where the sink is shared with a kitchen, work to the volumes set out in cyanotype process safely.

Spent fixer is the chemical most studios get wrong. Once paper or film has passed through it, the fixer holds dissolved silver, and silver-bearing waste is not something a Canadian sewer use bylaw will accept. Take it to a household hazardous waste depot that accepts photographic chemistry, or strip the silver first with an electrolytic unit or a steel wool canister, which recovers most of the metal before the liquid goes to the depot. Used developer and stop bath travel with the fixer, not down the sink.

Before you load the car:

Depots still take a container whose label has faded, as long as it is sealed and you can describe how the chemical was used.

What a compliant label carries

In a studio with employees, WHMIS 2015 applies and workplace labels are mandatory. A supplier label carries the product identifier, the supplier's name and contact details, the hazard pictogram, a signal word such as Danger or Warning, and the hazard statement. Precautionary statements and a pointer to the safety data sheet follow.

For your own waste, copy the useful half. Write what is inside, the hazard class, and the date the bottle was filled. Include the volume if the depot caps drop-offs, as many do in the range of 10 to 20 litres per visit. What to keep and what to reject is a separate question, answered under contaminated printmaking materials.

Moving waste yourself on a public road can pull in the Transportation of Dangerous Goods Act, so many small studios hand the job to a licensed hauler.

Records worth keeping

Landlords, insurers and bylaw officers ask the same question, which is where the material went. If your bin keeps filling with the same ruined batch, chase the cause: the reasons printmaking mistakes keep happening usually sit in the process, not the waste.

What happens when you skip it

A single bad pour can bring a sewer use bylaw charge, and the municipality can bill a studio for cleaning the sewer main and for harm at the treatment plant. If the discharge reaches a storm drain and then a creek, the Fisheries Act applies: section 36(3) prohibits depositing a deleterious substance into water frequented by fish.

Cross-border disposal falls under the Cross-border Movement of Hazardous Waste and Hazardous Recyclable Material Regulations, which replaced the old export and import rules, so waste cannot quietly be trucked to the US.

Common questions