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Old Landscape timbers - removal ideas

flowerpilot
11 years ago

Been a while since I've posted; looking for some ideas on an upcoming dilemma...

We created some raised garden beds in our back yard circa 1998-1999, shortly after moving in; our first house, and I was adamant about having some dirt to play in after all of those years in apartments :) We used landscape timbers and rebar to create the beds, being some what cash-poor shortly after moving in, and not having the money (or garden savvy) to get cedar. Two beds are 4' x 16', one is 4' x 12', between 2-3 rows of timbers high. After the last couple of winters, the timbers have quite a bit of rotting from the inside of the bed, and I have ordered raised bed kits to replace the two larger beds, hopefully to be here within a week or so.

My dilemma is: what do i do with the outgoing landscape timbers? I don't have any room to recycle them in the garden, and based on the time we purchased them, and a label on one of the replacements (says 'Landscape Timbers SYP CCA-NON-AWPA-STD'), I believe these were made/sold at a time when arsenic was still used as part of the preserving process.

Our local household waste disposal location doesn't have landscape timbers/wood products on the list of materials it accepts; and given the arsenic, I am presuming that chopping them up for firewood is not an option. Has anyone else faced this problem? Is it OK to simply set them out with the standard trash pickup?

Looking for thoughts on how to handle - I'd like to recycle if possible, but the chemicals may not permit that.

(As long as the older ones are going away, guess I need to get rid of the unused replacement timbers in the garage - anybody in the market for some 8' older CCA-treated landscape timbers (guessing about 6)?)

Thanks for any advice, Flowerpilot

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