Market for used acids and bases from former plating shop?

A. I have responded in the following way to this question before and, sad to say, no one has ever challenged me on it yet. Hopefully this time someone will, and will thereby give you some options and me some hope--but in the meanwhile, here's my take:

Recycling and reuse of chemicals was a victim of the law of unintended consequences. The EPA's RCRA rules with their "derived from", "mixture rules", and "cradle to grave" responsibility, turned the industrial waste exchanges into a game of Russian roulette that no one could be foolish enough to play. Suppose the exchange folded and some of your waste was found there? You would be hung out to dry. The pleas of thousands of platers were ignored for years on end, as these regulations continued to pound a stake through the heart of the industrial recycling industry and their efforts toward sustainability. Although I don't really know for sure, I don't think any industrial waste exchanges exist anywhere in the U.S. anymore; the biggest one from this area lists a disconnected phone line (and a BBS phone number rather than a URL) on an obsolete web page.

I guess the waste exchange properties are abandoned industrial sites requiring EPA supervised cleanup too :-)

Thank you for your time, you have confirmed what we thought but wanted to do due diligence for our client.

A. I'd bet your customer would LOVE to give this stuff away. By weight, this solution contains about 1000 lbs (approx. only $600) of copper and 3000! lbs of Cyanide. Nobody wants this stuff. He's going to have to pay the Piper and get it hauled. I wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole.