Overall Rating Gold - expired
Overall Score 66.13
Liaison Brandon Trelstad
Submission Date Jan. 31, 2011
Executive Letter Download

STARS v1.0

Oregon State University
OP-21: Hazardous Waste Management

Status Score Responsible Party
Complete 1.00 / 1.00 Bo Bestvina
Sustainability Program Evaluator
Facilities
"---" 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:

Environmental Health and Safety at OSU encourages hazardous waste generators to reduce waste whenever possible. Specific reduction strategies include: Accurate labeling to prevent improper disposal of unknown hazardous material, combining flammable organic solvents for reuse as off-site fuel, separating halogenated solvents for solvent recovery, reusing/redistributing chemicals when materials come from unopened containers or partially used containers of high quality, neutralizing of chemical wastes which have corrosive properties, purchasing chemicals in a manner that does not exceed anticipated needs, and modifying procedures to reduce the hazard or amount of waste products or using less hazardous materials in procedures in general.


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

Environmental Health and Safety disposes of all hazardous waste in accordance with federal and state regulations. Federal regulations can be found at: http://www.epa.gov/wastes/laws-regs/regs-haz.htm
Departments are encouraged to employ waste reduction procedures to limit costs and waste volumes. Prior to disposal of any hazardous chemical waste, OSU must perform an official hazardous waste determination to see if the waste is hazardous, and to what degree.

Biological waste, cultures and stocks, pathological waste, and sharps are all considered hazardous and therefore are incinerated. All aerosol cans are considered hazardous waste until completely empty. The Facilities Services department has purchased several devices to open aerosol cans and drain contents, except for cans with pesticides or other highly toxic materials which should be treated as with other hazardous wastes. Radioactive waste containers must have a record of materials in the container which is kept up-to-date. Radioactive waste is segregated by half-life and guidelines for storage and treatment of such waste (before disposal) is offered by the link provided below.


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