Disposing of contaminated jars

[BuckarooBanzai]

Everybody gets contams. Even the pros with the %99.999 filtered clean rooms and top of the line computerized autoclaves get contams. Home cultivators get a lot of contams. Contams can spread very, very easily.

How do you safely dispose of a contaminated jar, a jar containing billions of contam spores, without spreading those contam spores everywhere?

A quarter sized spot of trich in a grain jar represents literally millions of contaminant spores. When you see green, it means the trich is already sporulating. The smallest breath of air makes those spores go airborne. They become an invisible fog of evil, ready to try and infect every future project you work on.

You can't just throw contaminated jars away - jars are expensive! Somehow you must remove the contaminated grain/cake from the jar WITHOUT releasing all those contam spores into the air.

Ideally, you would put on a disposable Tyvek suit and dump those contams outside, far downwind of your grow environment. Then you would remove and burn the suit before returning to your grow space.

In the real world, you look quite suspicious donning a disposable Tyvek bunny suit to dump contaminated popcorn jars in the dumpster behind your apartment complex. Even if you wait until 4AM, a Tyvek suit in the parking lot just isn't very stealthy.

Most of us need to be able to dump contaminated jars inside our homes/grow spaces. This can be highly problematic (please see the previously mentioned millions of spores from a quarter sized spot of the mean green).

So, when I am confronted with disposing of a badly contaminated jar, a jar I have ignored for three weeks that now contains trillions of contaminant spores, what do I do?

I fill a 60mL syringe with rubbing alcohol and inject about 20mL-40mL into that nasty bugger of a jar. Then I shake it up and wet all the internal surfaces with alcohol. Then I wait about 30 minutes and then I dump the now harmless jar into a trash bag in open air.

The alcohol WILL NOT kill all the contam spores in 30 minutes. It will kill quite a few of them, but not all of them. The alcohol WILL wet most of the spores and keep them from becoming airborne. Letting the jar sit for 30 minutes WILL make certain the alcohol fumes have killed any spores that became airborne (as a result of the shake).

After an injection of alcohol sufficient to wet the contents and a 30 minute pause, you can dump a terribly infected jar (in open air) without any concern of an evil fog of contaminant spores puffing out.

You can get cheaper (but less efective) results by injecting water into an infected jar to wet the contam spores.

[AGAMA]

Wow, wish I'd known that last night when I did go outside(w/o the tyvek suit), and, using latex gloves, did shake out the jar and wipe the contents out with a paper towel. Then stuffed everything in a ziploc and closed(except jar). Submerged jar in bleach water as soon as I got inside.
Will definitely be using the alcohol injection therapy for all my jarred contams!

Thanx.

[fungus_amongus]

Thanks! This is a great one..really wish id of read this earlier..ive wondered what the best way to go about this procedure is...

[p2k1]

Theres also this tek
1. Pull up to dumpster
2. Dump
3. Swerve, smoking

[kcmoxtractor]

I'm guessing that bleach or any other disinfectant could be subbed for alcohol?

[TheAlchemist]

Could always presssure cook the contaminated jars?

[BuckarooBanzai]

Originally Posted by TheAlchemist

Could always presssure cook the contaminated jars?

Yes you can, but they smell quite bad.

Bleach would work. Plain water would work. The most important thing is to get all the spores in the jar well wetted so they don't go airborne.