Overall Rating Silver - expired
Overall Score 58.99
Liaison Deborah Steinberg
Submission Date Feb. 27, 2015
Executive Letter Download

STARS v2.0

Carnegie Mellon University
OP-25: Hazardous Waste Management

Status Score Responsible Party
Complete 1.00 / 1.00 Madelyn Miller
Director
EH&S: Environmental Health & Safety
"---" indicates that no data was submitted for this field

Does the institution have strategies in place to safely dispose of all hazardous, special (e.g. coal ash), universal, and non-regulated chemical waste and seek to minimize the presence of these materials on campus?:
Yes

A brief description of steps taken to reduce hazardous, special (e.g. coal ash), universal, and non-regulated chemical waste:

Carnegie Mellon University's Environmental Health & Safety Department (EH&S) Office, regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), manages the safety disposal of all hazardous, universal, and non-regulated chemical waste. To minimize hazardous wastes, EH&S has incorporated a hazardous waste minimization program, stressing proper purchasing, (smaller quantities, lower hazard), proper chemical inventory & maintenance, procedure micro-scaling, chemical sharing, proper waste segregation.


A brief description of how the institution safely disposes of hazardous, universal, and non-regulated chemical waste:

Carnegie Mellon University's Environmental Health & Safety Department Office, regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, manages the safety disposal of all hazardous, universal, and non-regulated chemical waste.

Waste generators all receive training. Waste requests are made on-line.

All hazardous waste is picked up at the point of generation, (laboratory, studio or shop) by filling out an electronic pickup request form and packaging the waste in special boxes provided by the EH&S.

Electronic waste is also collected by on-line request. Program guidance and operation procedure is available in training, newsletters and on the website.


A brief description of any significant hazardous material release incidents during the previous three years, including volume, impact and response/remediation:

None.


A brief description of any inventory system employed by the institution to facilitate the reuse or redistribution of laboratory chemicals:

Carnegie Mellon University uses the Chemtracker Chemical Inventory Management System. Authorized users have access to their chemical inventory to make changes, corrections and updates, prepare inventory reports and obtain safety information on their chemicals, all from this system. We encourage all chemical users via our web page, newsletters and training classes, to contact EH&S before purchasing chemicals to see whether they many be shared from a current owner of the item. Chemtracker enables us to find these items.


Does the institution have or participate in a program to responsibly recycle, reuse, and/or refurbish all electronic waste generated by the institution?:
Yes

Does the institution have or participate in a program to responsibly recycle, reuse, and/or refurbish electronic waste generated by students?:
Yes

A brief description of the electronic waste recycling program(s):

The Environmental Health & Safety Office manages all e-waste recycling efforts. For the University, recyclable e-waste materials include computer monitors & towers, copy & fax machines, some computer peripherals, and light bulbs. Other e-waste items collected for recycling include alkaline & rechargeable batteries, cell phones, toner, ink jet and copy machine cartridges and all other electronic devices and media.

Requests for pickups are made online, contractors pick up materials at the site of generation. The contractor is audited to ensure maximum level of recycling, plus data destruction.


A brief description of steps taken to ensure that e-waste is recycled responsibly, workers’ basic safety is protected, and environmental standards are met:

The goal of Carnegie Mellon University's Environmental Health & Safety (EH&S) Office is to handle e-waste recycling and hazardous waste disposal programs responsibly. As such, certain methods like keeping batteries stored properly, packaging light bulbs in boxes with closed lids, only accepting unbroken tubes and bulbs for recycling, etc. are used to ensure that the e-waste is recycled responsibly, basic safety is protected, and environmental standards are met.


The website URL where information about the institution’s hazardous and electronic-waste recycling programs is available:
Data source(s) and notes about the submission:
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