Study of Industrial Wastes Reduction Policy of Laboratory Wastes in Universities - Case Study of a National University

According to Executive Yuan Environmental Protection Agency’s "Waste Disposal Act" article 2 amended on October 24, 2001, laboratories in schools are regulated as part of industries, that is, the wastes produced by thoses laboratories should be properly restored, removed, processed, reported, etc., (as written in the aforementioned article). There are a great variety of labs in universities, and the features of the wastes are different-typed, less amount, more complicated, and hazardous. General factories can decrease their processing costs by means of fixed production processes, large amounts of raw materials, and simple, stable waste. However, university labs have to spend more time, effort and money on wastes management, compared with these factories, because of the complex composition of their wastes, e.g. chemical wastes, toxic chemicals, radioactive substances and wastes, biological infectious wastes, etc, which can cause problems during the process of classification and storage. There are also risks when dealing with these wastes in labs of retired investigators, who may leave large amounts of chemicals, even unknown or expired chemicals in their labs. To reduce the laboratory waste’s threats on the environment, risk of harming the campus staffs, and to achieve the goal of sustainable development, this study is practiced by collecting the data of the university, understanding the types of industrial wastes, and observing the actual situation of the output, storage, management and disposal of the lab wastes. After collecting the data of hazardous industrial waste materials, from 2001 to 2010, the trends of the total wastes and variety of hazardous industrial wastes for each year were analyzed. A simple linear regression test was used for analysis of the budget of research projects and the hazardous industrial wastes.
The results of this study show that the most amount of hazardous industrial wastes is chemical waste. In 2010, the average amount of chemical waste is 6.5 kg/per-year-person, biological waste is 3.18 kg/per-year-person, and the most chemical waste comes from the Department of Chemistry, 69.68 kg/per-year-person. The most biological medical waste is 12.23 kg/per-year-person in the College of Medicine. According to the statistics found on hazardous industrial wastes, biological waste is also found in other departments besides the College of Medicine, showing that new bio-technologies research will affect the patterns of composition and distribution of industrial waste in the university. By the simple linear regression test of statistical methods, chemical waste and research funding are positively correlated (P= 0.009; the Department of Medicine, P=0.02). We can expect that when research funding increases, the chemical waste will be relatively increased. The biological waste of the Colleges of Science, Engineering, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Public Health, etc., have P values <0.05, indicating that biological waste output is no longer limited to the Colleges of Medicine and Life Science. The University must plan a reduction policy in advance to respond to the future trends. Visits to different lab showed that most of them have no waste reduction measures implemented, and the amount of the lab waste is not well controlled. University laboratories are research-oriented and focus on teaching students, so it’s easy to overlook the importance of waste reduction.
However, schools are educational institutions, so they should emphasize and implement the importance of environmental education in research and in life, training intellectuals to not just have the knowledge of environmental awareness but to apply this knowledge in their behavior for the better of the earth. For example, lab directors and students should focus on waste reduction, and there should be waste reduction measures in experimental studies, which must be strictly administered. Finally, this study will provide recommendations for industrial waste reduction policy for the university to reference to, which include：the establishment of a hazardous industrial wastes reduction team, hazardous industrial wastes reduction education, training and advocacy, building a computerized management system of chemicals, the establishment of a resource-sharing platform, common procurement of chemicals and supplies, preparing annual reports of statistics of laboratory wastes,etc.