New York University
Tier2-4: Chemical Reuse Inventory

The Department of Environmental Health & Safety supports the mission of New York University to become a “leadership university” by providing comprehensive environmental health and safety services to all faculty, students and staff. These services for the University community include environmental health and safety technical support, information and training programs, consulting services, auditing services.

The Department has a waste minimization policy that outlines how to reduce and reuse materials within departments and across the University and facilitates this exchange.

In order to better NYU's chemical usage as well as comply with local, state and federal chemical reporting laws within labs, arts, and maintenance areas NYU EHS has implemented Chemtracker. Chemtracker is an online chemical inventory system that all chemical users on campus have access to. During initial training on the use of Chemtracker the ability to view neighbors chemical inventories is discussed. “Chemical owners” are encouraged to utilize Chemtracker to keep more accurate chemical inventories and ask their colleagues for chemicals if and when they see large quantities in their colleagues inventories that they may not be using at the time.

This allows for the possibility of reducing chemical purchases and reducing redundant purchases. However the reuse of laboratory chemicals between Principal Investigators and researchers is dependent on science departments utilizing Chemtracker for this purpose. EHS does encourage chemical users to utilize Chemtracker for this purpose but it is up to each lab to look through Chemtracker and inquire with colleagues to re purpose un used or unwanted stored chemicals.