Overall Rating Bronze - expired
Overall Score 28.60
Liaison Nadine Johnson
Submission Date Jan. 18, 2011
Executive Letter Download

STARS v1.0

Estrella Mountain Community College
OP-21: Hazardous Waste Management

Status Score Responsible Party
Complete 1.00 / 1.00 Nadine Johnson
Sustainability Co-Chair
Academic Affairs
"---" indicates that no data was submitted for this field

Does the institution have strategies in place to safely dispose of all hazardous, 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, universal, and non-regulated chemical waste:

The following is a summary of steps we have taken to reduce waste, with supportive data, that has been taken in the Science Division at Estrella Mountain Community College.

For many of our student labs we have reduced waste generation by lowering the concentrations or quantity of chemicals used in student labs.

Lowered concentration of chemicals:
In a Chemistry 130 experiment, the students study chemical reactions. We are using .2 M solutions for qualitative labs rather than .5 M solutions for a 60% reduction by lower concentration.

In Chemistry 151 lab “Spectrophotometric Analysis of a Penny” the students use of .2M Copper(II) nitrate instead of .4M for a 50% reduction by lower concentration.

Smaller quantities of chemicals used:
In Chemistry 152, in the lab “The Determination of an Equilibrium Constant”, student groups has been assigned to make a set of 5 standards. Each standard contains 100mL of chemical. Each student groups only needs 10mL from each standard during the experiment. So rather than having 12 standard sets of 5 made up for the whole student lab, equaling 60 standards with 5400mL unused, we are using no more than 4 standard sets of 5, which means that we have reduced our waste in this lab by 66%.

There are more specific examples of the reduction of hazardous, universal, and non-regulated chemical waste that can be provided upon request.


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

Our campus safely disposes of hazardous, universal and non-regulated waste by having it transported off campus and disposed of by Clean Harbors Environmental Services, Inc.

In addition, the Science Division animal waste is handled by Alternative Animal Rites (Animal Cremation Services), the service which transports it off campus. It is disposed of by Steri Cycle.


The website URL where information about hazardous materials management is available:
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Data source(s) and notes about the submission:
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