What is the best way to get rid of used (several times) naphtha? The sanitation department nearby does not list naphtha as part of its hazardous waste collection program, and it clearly is not an eco-friendly product. Is there a workable solution other than just letting it sit in collection jars??

Evaporate it. You'll probably pick up some goodies.

I'd double check with the sanitation dept. Most do recycle paint thinners.

Alternatively, you can save the naphtha and reuse it for your initial pulls.

Though couldnt it get suspicious to turn up with a lot of naphtha from extractions?

Ideally one could distill solvents, but not everybody can. Another option is indeed like noman said, evap all the naphtha down (but of course that has some kind of ecological impact so best if avoided, even though I would guess its small impact compared to a lot of thing we do). Maybe even try to use a bit of fresh warm naphtha to recrystallize whatever residue is left considering there is some DMT. Or maybe putting in the freezer after most is evapped, see if some DMT crashes out.

Personally I preffer working with solvents like limonene, always salt out the alkaloids and reuse it over and over.

Tell us what you decided to do in the end.

I double checked the sanitation website and acolon_5 was right, they do take paint thinners (I had typed naphtha into their search box instead of paint thinner, and it came up with nothing). Weirdly enough though, they only accept large amounts, and recommend just throwing out small amounts in the trash, after it has been absorbed in something like kitty litter. I am certainly not going to drop any quantity of naphtha down the trash chute in my apartment building! Someone could drop a smoldering cigarette butt or something and boom.

I suppose I'll just evaporate it and make an attempt at recovery. If it were to end up at the dump, it would evaporate there anyway.

This is the ONLY good way to get rid of Naphtha that has been used for pulling spice.

ooops.....

or you could soak some of your favorite herb in it, then evap.

Flushing it in the toilet over a period of several days, little by little as the bathroom is naturally used for its purpose - would this be hazardous or not un-eco-friendly ?

Do not do this.

Water and oil (naphtha) do not mix. Flushing a NP solvent down the toilet will eventually lead to holes being eaten in your PVC plumbing (dips and low corners that appear in every situation) and a giant mess, to say the least.

Ah I had no idea about solvents being that hazardous, thank you. Was under the assumption that piping was pretty strong since you could dump pure lye crystals just for cleaning.

I wanted to chime in with the "Please Do Not Flush!" chorus! The municipal water treatment facilities do not need this junk in their systems, particularly if alot of people started doing it. The suggestion to evaporate it is the next worst, but better than dumping in the sewer, and you could potentially get some actives back which balance out some of the environmental harm. Be sure you don't breath it either. Yes, I know, everything we do, including typing on the internet, has a benefit to us and a harm to the environment. I think the best option is to take it to a recycler that accepts solvents so it can be reused for something, or at least turned into a fuel if nothing else.

Full disclosure, I may just be a nut. I imagined that during my very first mhrb extraction I evaporated the naptha, leaving orange, harsh crystals, and the next day had my only bad experience ever on cacti. In addition to being extremely physically ill (lots of hard throwing up with a massive headache for 6 hours during the trip) I felt really guilty for evaporating all that solvent. Gaia was not happy with me, and I felt it. So yeah, after that beat down I switched to freeze precipitation and reuse of the solvent, and am working on greener extraction tecs using limonene.

Namaste!

lots of communities have "household toxic waste roundups" where you can bring smaller quantities of things like paint thinner. i used to be a painting contractor and i used to get rid of small amounts of thinners at the small waste roundups.
here's a link to the one for Los Angeles: http://www.lacsd.org/info/hhw_e_waste/default.asp - if you search for HOUSEHOLD toxic waste roundup, and include your city - you should be able to find one that will take small amounts.
Although evap and reclaim sounds pretty good to me