Thank you for hosting a lead tackle collection as part of your Household Hazardous Waste (“HHW”) collection!

Lead remains the leading cause of death for adult Common Loons in New Hampshire. 38% of adult loons collected since 1989 died from lead poisoning, a direct result of the ingestion of lead sinkers and lead-headed jigs. Lead is highly toxic, and loons will die within two to four weeks after they ingest just one small lead object.

We have developed the resources below to help make your HHW Day lead tackle collection a success:

If possible, could you please provide us with some very limited data following your events using the form above?

1. The number of transactions involving a lead turn-in at your event; and,

2. The total weight of the lead tackle collected.

Whereas many of you will be sending lead tackle straight for recycling, LPC will be unable to analyze the tackle like it does with that collected from LTB partner retailers. Any science-based organization like LPC always places a premium on data. So, all the tackle from our participating retailers comes back to LPC to be weighed, tallied, then sent for recycling. This allows us to report the success of the Lead Tackle Buyback program on a per-transaction basis to funders and others seeking to start similar programs in their states.

Thank you again for helping to protect loons from lead poisoning!

If you need additional resources or have questions, please contact:

Caroline Hughes
Outreach Biologist and Lead Tackle Buyback Coordinator
Loon Preservation Committee
Phone: 603-476-5666
email