- Introduction
- What are Waste Minimization and Pollution Prevention?
- Why are Waste Minimization and Pollution Prevention Important?
- Purchasing Chemicals
- Managing Chemical Inventories
- Dealing with an Existing Inventory of Unwanted Chemicals
- »Conducting Experiments«
- Scaling Down Experiments
- Substituting Materials
- Alternatives to Wet Chemistry
- Reusing and Recycling Chemical Resources
- Segregating Waste Streams
- In-Laboratory Treatment of Wastes
- Working with School Administrators, Students, Other Schools, and the Community
- Getting More Information
- Appendix A—Waste Minimization Checklist
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Waste minimization in the laboratory doesn’t necessarily require major changes in the way you run experiments. Some basic efforts to be more efficient and careful with experimental procedures can substantially reduce the amount of waste generated.
Teach—and practice—resource-efficient procedures
A starting point for waste minimization is being efficient in your use of resources. If you as a teacher place emphasis on being sparing with chemical usage or use of other resources (such as water or electricity), then students will be more likely to pay attention to these resources as well. Getting students to think about the environmental consequences of their laboratory activities makes sense in any experiment. Some suggestions for teaching resource-efficient procedures include:
- Have students use solvents and other hazardous materials sparingly.
- Monitor experimental reactions closely and add additional chemicals only as necessary.
- Emphasize water conservation by reducing rinse times where possible.
- Be alert for opportunities to save electricity. For example, don’t leave equipment running when it’s not being used.
Set up experiments with waste minimization in mind
In addition to being just plain careful about chemical use, you can take a number of steps in the design and set up of experiments that will help to minimize waste. Chapter 8 will cover in detail the option of scaling down the size of experiments. In addition, some other steps you can take include:
- Pre-weigh chemicals for students. This will take more time on your part, but it will also make lab time more productive for the students.
- Have students work in teams. For example, pairing students can cut the number of chemicals that will be used in half. Pairing also teaches students to work together.
- Alternatively, you may want to demonstrate some experiments yourself, rather than having the whole class perform them.
- Set up a procedure to use spent or recovered solvents for an initial rinse, and save fresh solvents for use in the final rinse only.
Where feasible, include a step as part of the experiment that destroys or inactivates any hazardous products. Chapter 13 will cover “treatment” of hazardous waste materials in more detail. Certain hazardous chemicals such as acids and bases can be easily neutralized as a part of the experiment.
Encourage students to research waste minimization
Finally, a good way to get students thinking about waste minimization as they run experiments is to have them actually research waste minimization techniques. You might think of including an experiment in your curriculum that actually gets the students to identify ways to minimize use of hazardous chemicals or generation of hazardous byproducts.
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