Indiana University Southeast
OP-20: Hazardous Waste Management

"The following guidelines are provided to employees for hazardous waste minimization. This requires active thought and preparation as chemicals are purchased and used:

Inventory your chemicals: The most important step you can take toward waste minimization is to know what you currently have and use by maintaining a running inventory of chemicals in your workplace. An inventory is also an invaluable tool in emergency situations. Not only is this a good idea, but a chemical inventory is required under the hazard communication standard.

Check your current inventory before ordering to avoid unnecessary purchases!

Note the date a container is acquired or opened on the container.

Use older chemicals before purchasing or opening new bottles to reduce the amount of product wasted because a chemical has passed its expiration date.

Order only what you need: Buy what you will use in a reasonable time period. Buying in bulk rarely saves money when you consider disposal costs of unused material.

Testing a new experiment and not sure what you need? Start small. Purchase small amounts to perform trials of a new procedure.

It may also be possible to borrow small amounts of chemicals from other labs. Please take the time to check.

Centralize purchasing. Stop duplicate ordering by designating one person in your lab or workgroup to be responsible for chemical purchases.

Purchase compressed gas cylinders or lecture bottles only from manufacturers who will accept returns of empty cylinders.

Use recycled or secondhand chemicals whenever possible: Be on the lookout for unwanted chemicals in other labs or work areas. Before you call EHS to dispose of an unwanted but usable chemical, please check to see whether other labs in your building can use the material. Pay special attention when you hear of a lab group that is moving or a workgroup that is changing a process!

Evaluate the possibility of the redistillation of waste solvents in your lab.
Reduce the amount of product used. This can be achieved by reducing the scale of experiments. Periodically review your procedures to see if this is possible. Also, make sure you read and follow instructions so that you only use what is needed. Get away from the false belief that “if one cup works, then 2 cups will really be great? This is especially true for the application of pest control and fertilizers. What is not used will only run off to water resources or contaminate the soil.

Prevent students in teaching labs from over-dispensing chemicals by pre-weighing chemicals needed for experimentation, storing stock chemicals in small nozzle bottles, and preparing stock solutions prior to each experiment.

Substitute instrumental methods for wet chemistry whenever possible.
Substitute non-toxic or less toxic materials: Consider less toxic substitutes for commonly used chemicals. These substitutions can be done in most situations with satisfactory results. EHS is happy to provide waste minimization consultation and green product evaluation.
Detoxify or neutralize waste products within experimentation procedures whenever possible.
Maintain accurate labels on all products and waste bottles to ensure that unknown chemicals are not generated.

Do not mix hazardous and non-hazardous waste: Non-hazardous waste, when mixed with hazardous waste, will become hazardous itself. This only results in increased volumes of hazardous waste produced. For example, a solvent is used to clean the residues of an oil spill, and the rag is then placed in a drum of oil and absorbent material. This drum, formerly non-regulated with a disposal cost of $45, is now hazardous waste and disposal will cost the university $211.56.
High concentration waste should not be mixed with low concentration waste.

Avoid experiments that produce waste that is both radioactive and chemically hazardous or biologically and chemically hazardous.

The Office of Environmental Health and Safety (EHS) maintains a website aimed to provide information to identify the specific hazards of the products used and to reduce or eliminate exposure risks. When surplus chemicals are given to EHS, it is first determined whether the chemical is indeed a waste, or whether it can be reused or recycled. If it is a waste, the degree of hazard and the appropriate disposal route are determined. Throughout this process, the university is required to keep records that account for hazardous wastes throughout the lifecycle of the product.

https://protect.iu.edu/environmental-health/environmental-management/waste-management/waste-guide/minimization.html

Proper handling and disposal of hazardous waste are critical to worker safety, the health of the community, and the protection of our environment. Collection and processing of these wastes are managed by EHS, Radiation Safety, and, in some cases, Laboratory Animal Resources personnel.

All hazardous waste must ultimately be managed by a permitted Treatment, Storage, and Disposal Facility (TSDF). The waste codes assigned to a waste and its physical properties determine which treatment/disposal techniques are available.

Fuel substitution at a cement kiln, wastewater treatment (neutralization, precipitation of metals, reduction, etc.), stabilization of metal-bearing solids, and rotary kiln incineration are the methods most frequently employed for final disposal of wastes generated by Indiana University.
https://protect.iu.edu/environmental-health/environmental-management/waste-management/waste-guide/minimization.html

The IU Southeast spill report records indicate that no such incidents occurred within the last three years.

Indiana University has a chemical inventory database that allows researchers to make exchanges with new/used chemicals. Although there is no formal policy requiring labs to reuse older chemicals before new ones, as space and need for the older/used chemicals run out they are sent back to the vendors to be burned in a cement kiln for energy. There are guidelines in place to encourage employees to try to use unwanted chemicals from other labs and to see whether others can use the chemicals they no longer need before disposing of them.

The state of Indiana mandates all unneeded, obsolete, or broken electronics must be recycled. See Indiana Regulations Affecting Electronic Waste (e-Waste)
https://www.in.gov/idem/recycle/2384.htm

IU Green IT provides information and guidance on E-Waste: https://sustain.iu.edu/commitment/it/index.html

Department Disposal Guidelines can also be found at:
https://kb.iu.edu/d/amdw

Protect IU provides guidance on secure data removal: Before a department may redistribute, sell, or dispose of computing equipment to another entity, all data must be removed from the storage device(s) to comply with IU Purchasing policy (FIN-PURCH-11). Departments must choose and correctly use a tool that performs at least a 1-pass wipe of the storage device. UISO has verified that the tools that can satisfy this requirement if used correctly, are DBAN and Mac OS X's Disk Utility.
https://protect.iu.edu/online-safety/protect-data/data-removal.html

Disposal and Redistribution of University Property
“The disposition of university property that is no longer wanted by a unit should be undertaken in such a way to maximize the property’s value to the university, either through redistribution within the university or, upon the approval of University Procurement Services or the appropriate property designee of the campus (e.g. Surplus), through a sale or trade toward a new purchase when the university property is no longer usable within the university. All approved sales will be conducted by either Purchasing or the Indiana University Surplus Stores.”
https://policies.iu.edu/policies/fin-purch-11-disposal-and-redistribution-university-property/index.html

Students are also encouraged to use local resources offered by vendors (like Home Depot which takes bulbs, Best Buy which takes many electronics, etc.) or their local Solid Waste Management District.

IU Southeast has an arrangement with Barnes & Noble to sell surplus computers through the campus bookstore.- https://www.ius.edu/search.php?q=computer%20sale

Data was retrieved from the following site locations:

Protect IU:
https://protect.iu.edu/

Environmental Health/Waste Management:
https://protect.iu.edu/environmental-health/environmental-management/waste-management/waste-guide/minimization.html

See Indiana Regulations Affecting Electronic Waste (e-Waste):
https://www.in.gov/idem/recycle/2384.htm

IU Green IT provides information and guidance on E-Waste: https://sustain.iu.edu/commitment/it/index.html

Department Disposal Guidelines can also be found at:
https://kb.iu.edu/d/amdw

Protect IU provides guidance on secure data removal:
https://protect.iu.edu/online-safety/protect-data/data-removal.html

All approved sales will be conducted by either Purchasing or the Indiana University Surplus Stores:
https://policies.iu.edu/policies/fin-purch-11-disposal-and-redistribution-university-property/index.html

IU Environmental Health and Safety:
https://protect.iu.edu/environmental-health/index.html

IU Waste Management Program:
https://storage.googleapis.com/stars-static/secure/558/8/770/7291/IU_Waste_Management_Program_2018.pdf

Disposal and Redistribution of University Property FIN-PURCH-11:
https://policies.iu.edu/policies/fin-purch-11-disposal-and-redistribution-university-property/index.html

IT Community Partnerships (ITCP), in coordination with other units across Indiana University, has finalized a new, e-waste contract. Green Wave Computer Recycling is now the contracted vendor for e-waste removal services at Indiana University, eff. 091719 - 063022 Green Wave is R2 certified and follows ISO 14001, ISO 18001, and all IDEM requirements. Green Wave Computer Recycling lists R2 compliance on their website: http://www.gwcri.com/