Northwestern University
OP-20: Hazardous Waste Management

The Office for Research Safety (ORS) trains all lab workers handling chemical and hazardous waste. The annual recertification program strongly emphasizes source reduction through purchasing only as much as is needed, sharing excess chemicals between labs, and stresses proper waste separation. Clean solvent wastes, that can be used for fuels blending and diverted from a chemical incinerator, are separately collected to prevent contamination with out of spec wastes. The internal Northwestern sewer disposal thresholds are set lower than the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District thresholds at the outfall stations.

The laboratory stores program does not offer volume purchase discounts, which encourages purchasing just the amounts needed. A free mercury thermometer exchange program is in place where labs can exchange mercury thermometers for non-mercury thermometers. Traditional film developing practices are phased out for lower waste digital technology. Irradiators based on high energy radioactive materials are phased out for electrically powered X-ray irradiators. The substitution of halogenated solvents with non-halogenated solvents is encouraged in research. Green Chemistry practices are taught and promoted in undergraduate labs.

Aside from waste avoidance strategies, waste separation remains the main strategy to manage regulated hazardous waste streams at Northwestern University. Non separated waste streams, so called mixed wastes, for example radioactive waste mixed with chemical or biological waste, can be one of the most unsustainable aspects of a hazardous waste disposal program. Keeping separate many hazardous, universal, special and non-hazardous waste streams is one of the most successful strategies to reduce the types and amounts of wastes that have to be incinerated or land filled. Unmixed waste streams open up opportunities for treatment, down cycling, energy reuse and recycling.

Northwestern University contracts the hazardous, universal, special and parts of the non-hazardous waste management program with Heritage Environmental. Eight full time onsite staff handle the 108 hazardous, universal, special and non-hazardous waste streams, that have been set up. Of these 108 waste streams, 59 waste streams are sent for fuel blending, chemical treatment, reclamation and recycling.

There were no significant hazardous material release incidents.

In 2018, Northwestern University’s Research Safety contracted with BioRaft to professionally manage a digital registry platform. The digital research registration platform contains a chemical inventory system. As the use of this chemical inventory platform grows, better avoidance of duplicate purchases and sharing of small amounts of specialty chemicals between research groups is expected.

The Purchasing Department has set up pricing with the chemical vendors to avoid overbuying at large product sizes. Order pricing and supply chain processes incentivize just-in-time purchases and overall inventory control.

Northwestern University coordinates an institution-wide ecycling program, and electronic items must be recycled as mandated by state law. The program is available, at no charge, for all faculty, staff and students. Faculty and staff are encouraged to list working electronic items on the campus Surplus Exchange website before recycling. In addition to traditional computer equipment, laboratory equipment is also collected for recycling through the ecycling program.



Items generated by faculty/staff are picked up for recycling from their campus location. Students are offered a central drop-off location (one on each campus) for electronics recycling. These items are stored centrally until our contracted electronics recycling vendor picks the materials up from campus.
https://www.northwestern.edu/fm/services/computer-electronic-recycling/index.html

Our vendor, Vintage Tech, is e-steward certified, http://e-stewards.org/recycler/vintage-tech-llc/.