More than 500 people made use of Saturday’s Household Hazardous Materials Waste Day, held both in Wareham and Marion by the Carver Marion Wareham Regional Refuse Disposal District.

Last summer, the event was held only in Wareham, and traffic was backed up from the Municipal Maintenance Facility at 95 Charge Pond Road all the way to Cranberry Highway, with some people waiting hours to dispose of hazardous waste.

On Saturday, despite the presence of people waiting to get rid of waste as early as 6:30 a.m. before the event’s 9 a.m. start time, the process went smoothly in Wareham. 

As more and more vehicles arrived, workers guided them into two lines that wrapped around the maintenance facility.

Municipal Maintenance employee Tony Borsari said that as he saw more and more cars pulling up the driveway, he started to get worried, thinking “Oh boy, here we go again.”

Luckily, the process went smoothly.

District Director Jeffrey Osuch said that 150 vehicles made their way through the disposal process in the first hour, and that the wait was down to almost nothing by 10:30. 

“This is good for the community, and it’s good for the environment,” said Borsari, explaining that when people don’t have a safe way to dispose of hazardous waste, it often ends up dumped on the side of the road or otherwise disposed of improperly.

Just before the event’s end at noon, Osuch said that he expected both sites to receive just over 250 visitors. 

Osuch attributed this year’s success to several factors: Having two locations open meant that the traffic and work wasn’t bottlenecking in Wareham, and Municipal Maintenance Director Dave Menard contributed several ideas that improved the process. Additionally, last year’s event was the first hazardous waste day in a year, so residents had had more time to accumulate waste with no way to dispose of it.