Pollution Prevention Around Your Home

Your Yard and Garden
Pesticides and fertilizers can pollute our creeks and Bay.

• Eliminate or reduce your use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers. If you must use them, use sparingly. Especially avoid products containing diazinon and chlorpyrifos, which can harm aquatic life.
• Control pests with non-toxic alternatives such as hand-picking, traps, and encouraging predatory insects.
• Locate Integrated Pest Management Partnership Stores are in your area. These hardware stores and nurseries have committed to providing a wide variety of less-toxic pest control products to their customers.
• Never apply pesticides or fertilizers when rain is forecast.
• Don't over-water. Chlorinated tap water can be dangerous to aquatic life, and over-watering can wash residual pesticides and fertilizers into the storm drain.
• Keep litter and leaves out of gutters and storm drains.
• Dispose of unused pesticides, paint, household cleaners and other potential hazardous material at a household hazardous waste facility.
• Pick up animal wastes, wrap well and dispose in garbage cans.

Around Your Home
Preventing water pollution at home only takes simples changes in the way we clean and do chores.

• Ensure that companies you hire, such as carpet cleaning, painting, and hauling services, dispose of materials properly, not in a gutter, storm drain, or roadside ditch.
• Clean up outdoor spills with a broom, not a hose. Use absorbents (i.e. cat litter, sawdust or cornmeal) as needed
• Rinse latex paint brushes in the sink, and filter and reuse oil-based paint thinners.
• Recycle
• Dispose of unused household chemicals properly.
• Buy "non-toxic" products whenever possible.

Your Car
Auto exhaust particles, leaking fluids and tire and brakepad debris are major sources of Bay Area water pollution.

• Maintain your car regularly and keep it free from leaks.
• Dispose of unused auto fluids and materials properly.
• Wash your car at a commercial car-washing facility. All commercial car-washing facilitie should be connected to the sanitary sewer system.
• If you wash your car at home, use as little soap and water as possible, and if you can, wash you car in an area that does not drain to the street. Even biodegradable soaps pollute creeks and the Bay.
• Drive less! Instead of driving, walk, bicycle, carpool, use public transit whenever you can. Plan errands to reduce driving.
• Dispose of your used oil safely, or click here to see what local stores will take your used oil.