Skidmore College
OP-20: Hazardous Waste Management

Skidmore has published a Hazardous Waste Management Policy that meets federal, state, and local regulations and covers topics including waste identification and characterizations, guidelines and requirements for hazardous waste accumulation areas, and waste minimization policies.

Skidmore's Environmental Health and Safety Office has made many efforts to reduce the amount of hazardous, special, universal, and non-regulated chemical waste generated on campus. The College has limited the amount of material ordered to campus by employing a comprehensive chemical inventorying program, helping to minimize unnecessary chemical purchases. A chemical substitution program was also established to minimize hazardous waste generation.

All universal waste, including fluorescent bulbs, HID lamps, batteries, and electronics are segregated and transported to facilities for proper processing and recycling.

Hazardous waste is transported to our main accumulation area where it is securely stored until disposal is required. At this time, a qualified, permitted, and licensed environmental contractor properly segregates and labpacks waste material and transports it to a permitted disposal facility where it is neutralized or deactivated.

Universal materials such as fluorescent bulbs and HIP lamps are segregated and picked up by a certified contractor for mercury recycling. Batteries, including lead acid, NiMH, NiCad, and lithium are properly collected on campus and transported to recycling facilities for processing and recycling. All electronics are collected and processed for recycling at licensed and permitted facilities. Oil and anti-freeze are recovered from College mechanic shops and properly recycled.

There have been zero major incidents involving hazardous material release in the previous three years.

Skidmore uses an online tool that tracks chemicals from the point of purchase to ultimate disposal. We are incorporating a hand-held scanning system so that we can trace chemicals at any point when they are on campus.

The chemical inventory system is used in many departments. The inventory program, Vetere Inventory Management, utilizes barcodes and is multi-purposed. Introduced to Chemistry in 2005 (Biology began using Vertere in 2010), the program:
1. tracks hazardous chemical quantities and allows for more efficient reporting pursuant to the EPA Community Right-to-Know legislation.
2. allows faculty to review chemical inventories prior to purchasing new stock.
3. allows faculty to review inventory to determine the location of existing inventory.
4. is in keeping with our EPA obligation to reduce and "reuse" hazardous chemicals in an effort to minimize hazardous waste.

All institution and student-owned electronic waste is collected and stored in a secure aggregation area. A certified contractor is hired to transport the material to an off-site location where it is processed and recycled. Skidmore's Facilities Services and Information Technology departments ensure that broken or obsolete electronics are collected in the designated aggregation area. We also inform the student body of the College's electronics waste program to ensure students utilize this service. Electronics that are operable but are no longer useful to the College are donated to local and regional organizations. The College also expands electronics recycling collection during the end-of-year move out to ensure we capture electronic waste from student rooms.

Used compact discs, printer/toner cartridges, and batteries are also collected at a recycling station outside of the College post office.