lab waste: disposal costs, etc.

[Jeswin]

Does anyone know if there are biohazard waste disposal for very small
companies. I'm probably generating less than 5 lbs of waste a month.
And not all of it is biohazard. There is an autoclave to take care of
serum contaminated items and other biohazards. They can then go into
general waste.

I am wondering about disposing EtBr gels? I generate less than a pound
every few months.
What about waste chloroform and phenol from extractions?

[shamrock]

In the US just about every major city has several waste disposal companies that pick up from physician offices and labs. In our case they charge by the burn box load which will hold about 40lb of waste. If your going to process your own waste you will probably need a license or permit of some sort from the state or local juristiction. To get and keep a license you will probably have to validate your autoclave and document the usage. It would probably be less of a headache to pay some one to take it away.

 

Chemical waste is a very diifferent story. Hiring a disposal company to cart away chemical waste can get very expensive very quickly. I know of a lab that had to pay $400 to get rid of an opened 500 ml bottle of phenol!

 

Don't se EtBr. There are plenty of alternatives. I like Gel Red, it uses the same filter, light and camera set up as EtBr and is more sensitive to boot. You can dispose of gels in the regular trash and buffer down the drain. Likewise with phenol. There are plenty of good DNA extraction methods and kits available that don't use phenol.

[Nathan McCorkle]

If you can't find a proper disposal company that will do small
amounts, maybe you can hook up with other local companies who also
generate small amounts of waste. You/someone could probably make this
into a business in a big enough metropolitan area, I'm sure there are
plenty of companies paying too much for waste disposal. I pay too much
for residential garbage pickup because I seem to discard about 1/4
what the rest of my neighbors do (I just recently skipped 4 weeks of
taking my can to the road).

I've had non-scientist friends ask me how to dispose of common
solvents and chemicals, recently it was regarding Aquarium fish 'quICK
cure' containing "Zinc Free Malachite Green, Formalin" and the best I
could say was label it properly and drop it off at the local college
chemistry department lab equipment check-out desk after-hours. It's
better than ruining the environment.

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--
-Nathan

[Eugen Leitl]

Chloroform should go into chlorinated solvents (combustion
creates phosgene, which needs extra exhaust scrubbing).
Phenol is just generic organic chemical waste.

Do you really have to use chlorform and ethidium bromide?
There are newer protocols which do without.