There’s a lot less junk and other unwanted discarded item cluttering up Ceres properties thanks to a special free waste disposal event held last Saturday.

For several hours Ceres residents streamed into the parking lot of Ceres River Bluff Regional Park on Hatch Road with 480 pickup and carloads to dispose of large bulky items, waste tires, electronic waste and wood. Taking the trash off their hands were about 22 persons, including personnel with the city of Ceres and Bertolotti Disposal and volunteers with the California Conservation Corps. At any given time there were four large dumpsters on hand.

“It went really well,” said Toni Cordell, administrative analyst for the city of Ceres Public Works Department who coordinated the event.

The city didn’t have the tonnage figures as of press time but Cordell confirmed that 181 mattresses were dropped off.

“There was a lot of e-waste – like TV monitors,” said Cordell. “Because it was limited to large items like appliances and furniture and what-not we got a lot of washers and dryers and a lot of refrigerators. We took a lot of tires.”

The event was not accepting yard waste but those who did were given a voucher to dispose of it at Bertolotti Disposal’s station on Flamingo Driver for free.

Household hazardous waste like pesticides, herbicides, chemical cleaners, paints, pool chemicals, fertilizers, glues, pharmaceuticals, are toxic or hazardous were also not accepted. However, those items may be dropped off at Stanislaus County’s free drive-through disposal collection event at County Center IV, 1710 Morgan Road, just south of Hatch Road and west of Highway 99. Household hazardous waste and electronic waste are collected free of charge to county residents. The collection facility is open Fridays and Saturdays, from 7:30 a.m. to 12 noon, excluding major holidays.

The special event dovetails with the city’s increase in code enforcement operations.