Less is Better

Less Is Better outlines the practical waste minimization concepts that laboratories adopted early on. Across government, industry, and academe, much attention is being given to the need to reduce waste. Increasing environmental awareness, a desire to reduce risks posed to employees and the public, and high disposal costs are directly linked to the efforts of laboratories to reduce their generation of chemical wastes. This work is properly rooted in the philosophy that “less is better”. Many laboratories have found that many of the same pollution prevention and waste minimization strategies used in industry can be successfully applied to laboratory operations. These strategies are:

• Better procurement management, especially avoiding over-ordering of hazardous materials;
• Substitution of hazardous materials with less hazardous or non-hazardous materials;
• Reduction of scale of experiments and protocols to the minimum size necessary to achieve research objectives;
• Redistribution, reuse, and recycling of supplies and reagents;
• Improvement of waste segregation to maximize recovery of materials and treatability of wastes; and
• Dissemination of information about the benefits and implementation of laboratory pollution prevention efforts.

This edition of Less Is Better discusses strategies for reducing wastes and presents the practical benefits of implementing minimization programs. It will prove helpful to bench chemists, business officers, chemical technicians, health and safety personnel, laboratory managers, professors and science teachers, purchasing agents, research directors, stockroom operators, and others.