We have to rid ourselves of excess junk.

From Thursday to Saturday, the annual Spring Clean Up  will collect an array of unwanted goods, including gnarly toxic materials at Saturday’s Household Hazardous Waste Collection.

Presented by the Town of Telluride and San Miguel County, the annual Spring Clean Up serves as an eco-friendly way to dispose of anything from a dingy couch to yard refuse.

“The main purpose when it started was for people to clean up their yards, and empty their basements and closets,” Lita Bilotti, of the Town of Telluride’s public works department, says. “It’s for household refuse, and there’s almost nothing we don’t take with our big 30-yard-long dumpsters.”

However, you need to know the rules, and the right way to dispose of items. Different items are accepted at the Spring Clean Up and the Hazmat collection.

“There’s still some confusion about the two events,” Chris Smith of the San Miguel County health department adds. “Hazmat is just a one-day event, and it takes place at a separate location.”

The Household Hazardous Waste Collection takes place at the Middle/High School Parking Lot from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday. The collection accepts toxic materials like paint products, motor oil and other automotive fluids, cleaners, pesticides, burnt out fluorescent light bulbs, pool and photo chemicals, household and power tool batteries, aerosols, adhesives, mercury switches, thermostats, ballasts and other over-the-counter medicine.

“It’s a great time to purge the toxics from your home environment,” Smith says. “The hazmat event is your yearly opportunity to get rid of environmentally harmful stuff in the right way.”

Clean Harbors Environmental Services from Norwell, Mass. deals with the local collection of hazardous waste, loading the toxic materials and taking them away. A fee of $1-$10 per item will be charged to offset the cost that the county and town pay for the hazardous waste removal. Depending on the items, hazardous waste is disposed of by recycling, destructive incineration — which occurs in Kimbal, Neb. where non-recyclables are either used for fuel or burned to ash — energy recovery or neutralization.

Most important, the hazmat collection isolates dangerous toxins, and keeps them from getting into the water — an eventual result of throwing hazmats in the trash where they ultimately sit in a landfill and seep into the ground and the water.

Saturday’s hazmat collection makes clearing out toxic waste an environmentally conscious and easy errand.

“The new, big thing this year is that we will have an express line,” says Smith.

The parking lot will have two lanes to expedite the collection process. The express lane, to the right, caters to minimal quantities of disposable hazardous materials. A left lane is open to larger loads of toxic materials.

Items that won’t be accepted include unpackaged materials, like a box of broken pesticide, mixed items, like jars within buckets, paint buckets with rags or tools inside, radioactive materials, smoke detectors, explosives or shock sensitive material, ammunition, compressed gas cylinders and medical waste like needles and DEA-regulated medicine.

“Last year somebody dropped off a broken box of pesticide, and it just caused a toxic cloud of pesticide dust in the air,” Smith says. “We need to make sure that containers contain materials properly.”

Smith also advises to be careful transporting hazardous materials to the collection. Be especially wary of buckets of paint, notorious for leaking, and protect cars from possible spills.

The hazmat collection still needs volunteers. Volunteers can lend a hand for an hour or more, helping sort and stack unwanted toxics.

The regular Spring Clean Up starts today at its location on West Black Bear Road. The site is open from 10-4 p.m. through Saturday.

At this location, county residents can sat goodbye to scrap metal, tires without rims, vehicle and motorcycle batteries (regular batteries go to hazmat), yard refuse, appliances, household recyclables like aluminum, glass, cardboard and newspaper, electronics and basically any piece of junk that can be thrown into a 30-yard-long dumpster.

“One girl asked about her bringing a car,” Bilotti says. “I can’t handle a car, but we’re happy to take other oversized items as long as we can get them into the dumpsters.”

Certain drop-off fees apply. Refrigerators and freezers cost $30 — the price it costs to remove the Freon. Electronics range from $5-$25 depending on size. Cell phones and household phones are free, along with all other household appliances.

“We also have a free area, and we want stuff to get reused,” Bilotti says. “If someone brings something that still has value, we put it in the free area and people can come salvage, but there’s no salvaging allowed anywhere else because it gets dangerous with big piles of shifting materials.”

With different stations for specific materials, staff will direct you to the proper disposal bins. On Saturday, there’s a long-standing tradition of the Ecology Commission helping out.

Much of the waste gets recycled by Recla Metal in Montrose and Waste Management’s recycling center in Grand Junction. Other trash ends up in the landfill.

Bilotti welcomes regional residents to unload as much as they’d like, but no commercial businesses.

“It’s a regional thing, and we’re trying to help everyone properly dispose of as much as possible,” she says. “It’s an overwhelming amount of trash as it is, so businesses really need to call their trash provider for a special pickup to deal with their unwanted waste.”

If individuals are unable to dispose of certain items, they can call Public Works and request a Friday afternoon pickup.

“If people call in ahead of time, we can come by with equipment and pick up their oversized stuff on Friday between 1-4 p.m.,” says Bilotti.

If interested, call 728-2177. For more information on Saturday’s Hazmat Collection or to volunteer, contact Smith at 369-5442.