Dispose of toxic household items (Detox Your Home)
Highly toxic items, such as chemicals, should never be put in your rubbish bins, poured down the drain, or left out on the nature strip during hard rubbish collections.
You can drop off unwanted household chemicals at our free Detox Your Home events, which are licensed to accept toxic chemicals and staffed by trained specialist chemists.
Around 40 pop-up events are hosted around Victoria each year in partnership with local councils.
Disposing of toxic items correctly will:
- reduce the risk to the environment and human health
- help keep our waterways clean
- prevent chemicals from ending up in landfill
- reuse precious resources.
Note: Household chemicals cannot be accepted at waste transfer stations due to the risk of fire or explosion when these items are combined or stored in large volumes.
Items accepted and not accepted
Check the full list of items that are accepted and not accepted.
Detox Your Home events are for households. Businesses should use a commercial waste disposal company.
Paint drop-off
Take your unwanted household paint to permanent drop-off sites operated by Paintback across Victoria. To find your nearest location, visit the Paintback website.
Upcoming events and registration
To learn about what to expect at our events, watch 'How to use Victoria's Detox Your Home service to dispose of toxic household chemicals'.
Detox Your Home event dates and locations are released regularly throughout the year and listed on this page.
To hear when event locations are announced, sign up to our quarterly newsletter or revisit this page.
We are currently finalising our Detox your Home events for the rest of 2024. Details will be available online on this page in mid July.
In the meantime, see our advice on safe handling of toxic household items.
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Since 1994, Sustainability Victoria has been helping Victorians detox their homes and keep everyday household chemicals out of our environment.
Free to attend and held across the state, Detox Your Home events have safely disposed of more than 17,000 tons of toxic chemicals, keeping Victorian families safe and toxic chemicals out of our environment and waterways. There's an event held nearly every weekend somewhere in Victoria, with the experienced team traveling to different communities throughout the year.
Taking part is easy. Start by cleaning out your shed, your garage, or that cupboard in the laundry that hasn't been touched for months and gather the chemicals you'd like to dispose of. We accept many kinds of everyday household chemicals, like cleaning products, garden chemicals, pool chemicals, photography chemicals, coolant, glues, solvents, fire extinguishers, old cosmetics and even used cooking oil. For the full list of accepted items make sure you visit our website. Check the website for upcoming event dates and locations, register for your preferred event online, then on the day just load your car and drive on down. A team of qualified chemists will unload and sort your materials for you. Most of it won't actually be disposed of. Often we're able to recover and reuse the product in some way. For example, in the past two years 68 tons of flammable liquids have been collected and repurposed for use in the production of cement.
So those old bottles of methylated spirits could help pave that new footpath in town.
Visit sustainability.vic.gov.au to find upcoming Detox Your Home events in your area.
Prepare for the event
Before the event
Ensure you pack only items accepted at Detox Your Home events.
The maximum acceptable weight or size of a single container is 20 kilograms or 20 litres.
Decanting is not permitted on site, so bring chemicals in disposable containers that you can leave with us.
You must clearly and accurately label your items:
- Use the original packaging if possible, if not, write the contents clearly using a permanent marker
- Decanting is not permitted on site, so bring chemicals in disposable containers
- If you’re unsure of the contents, label them ‘unknown’.
Put your items in your empty car boot or vehicle tray.
Read our tips to safely handle toxic chemicals.
At the event
There will be signs and directions for you to follow as you drive in.
Stay in your car. You won’t need to unload anything yourself. Our trained staff and qualified chemists will unload everything for you.
Generally the wait time is less than 10 minutes.
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More than 17,000 tons of toxic chemicals have been collected at Detox Your Home events, but we're not just taking these hazardous materials off
your hands. There's a lot of work that goes into disposing of them sustainably. After every event, the trucks are unloaded and the chemicals are checked and weighed. Then a team of qualified chemists sort them into the appropriate recovery or disposal pathways. Acids are neutralised, flammable liquid is reused as a blended fuel, and inert liquids are treated.
Even the packaging is recycled. So, by keeping your home safe, you're keeping our environment safer. Visit sustainability.vic.gov.au to find upcoming events in your area.
Toxic chemicals dropped off at a Detox Your Home event are immediately sorted by qualified chemists. They’re placed in sealed drums and transported to a specialist waste treatment facility.
Every effort is made to recycle chemicals or use them for other purposes. Some chemicals are used to create energy.
As a last resort, a small amount of chemicals will be stored in secure landfills in accordance with the Environmental Protection Authority Victoria’s requirements.
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