Used Fixer?

[MPrice]

A quick darkroom question, what do you do with your used fixer? From what I understand developer and stop are pretty non-toxic but fixer is full of of silver and not all that great for flushing into the sewer/river. At some point I learned to throw it into a tub with some steel wool which somehow takes the silver out of the solution, making the liquid safe to dump (leaving a nice sludge of silver in the tub to be recycled at some later date).

Now that I've been developing and printing a bit more the tub is filling up faster and I'm wondering if the theory behind this is sound or if I'm still dumping something I shouldn't down the drain.. Any thoughts on what to do or whether the steel wool method is affective are greatly appreciated....thanks.

[davidb]

The local university will probably take it to recycle. You should check with their photo department.

[CG]

Or check with local commercial labs who sometimes will help out.

[MPrice]

Thanks for the suggestions on recycling, I'll check into a few places here and see what I can come up with. As far as the way I have been doing things, anybody know if the steel wool method does anything or is it a tall tale?

[CG]

There are relevant threads at APUG.

These might be a start:

http://www.apug.org/forums/forum37/49623-chemistry-disposal-what-do-folks-actually-do-spent-chemistry.html

http://www.apug.org/forums/forum37/19569-silver-recovery-6.html

[MPrice]

Thanks, I'll check them out.

[jnantz]

buy a iron core trickle tank or get a
drum and have a waste hauler take all your liquids.

[John Powers]

Another vote for the university photo dept. The professors in the Photography Dept. of Akron U (OH) see that as a way of thinking green. Since our house is fed by a well that is a very comfortable shade of green.

John