Five general principles of waste minimization apply just as well to the smaller-scale operations of research laboratories as they do to industrial settings: Chemicals can be ordered conservatively to avoid disposal of unused materials; by using small-scale equipment and modern analytical techniques, experiments can be run with small amounts of chemicals; hazardous chemicals can be replaced by equivalent, less hazardous ones; some hazardous wastes can be detoxified in the laboratory as part of the experiment and an in-house exchange system can put excess chemicals to use instead of making them part of the waste stream.
An estimated 40% of the hazardous waste from labs is in the form of unused chemicals in their original containers. Laboratory scientists have carried their supermarket shopping habits over to their chemical shopping—they tend to order large volumes of chemicals, often in higher quantities than needed, because the cost per unit weight is lower. However, ...
