Avoiding Hazardous Waste Fines Efficiently
How do you store and dispose of your hazardous waste? Do you keep everything in an old bucket, or do you pour everything down the drain? Depending on the materials you're getting rid of, your waste could be highly toxic to your local environment and easy for local authorities to track. Whether you're a businesses with industrial byproduct that needs to be pumped, or a lab that needs to dispose of smaller vials of materials, here are a few storage and delivery techniques that can keep your disposal safe and efficient without flirting with illegal activities or endangering the environment.
Outboard Storage And Rails
If you store hazardous waste for extended periods of time, where do you keep it? If you use a shed or warehouse corner with a few buckets or tanks of waste, you're making a lot more work out of the process than many people realize.
Hazardous waste storage is an opportunity to embraces mobile packaging and storage. By investing in carts and rails that are large enough to hold storage materials, you can move materials around a lot easier, rearrange for more space as needed, and make eventual disposal a lot easier.
The first question any savvy risk assessor would have is safety on wheels and rails. A mobile shelf with hazardous materials? It sounds dangerous, and can be if you use just a standard cart, but a cart with raised edges or walls can keep your waste containers stable as they move.
Keeping materials away from deep corners and hard to reach places is key for proper disposal. It's not just about maintaining available space, as a difficult journey through stacked boxes and other objects crammed in front of hidden waste material can lead to a mishap. Find a secure, but easy to access area.
Planning Storage, Container Types, And Pickup Policies
With any hazardous material, make sure to consult a Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS). Businesses are required to keep MSDS copies for the materials in use, which contain instructions on proper handling, disposal, and emergency situation management. If your business doesn't regularly interact with hazardous materials, a quick search for the materials plus the acronym MSDS can usually get the information you need.
Material searches are not limited to complex chemical names. Brand names, off brands, and anything that is sold on the open market can usually be found by a market-identifiable name. Once this information is gathered, follow the handling instructions while looking for the storage and disposal information.
Either section should give you the information needed for proper storage. This is important because not all materials can be stored in a plastic/PVC (polyvinyl chloride) bucket or certain metal containers because of the way the substances react to certain materials.
Contact a hazardous waste company if you can't find the information, or don't have proper storage materials on hand. In addition to disposing of the materials for you, a hazardous waste team can suggest container types and point you in the right direction for future material handling. For more information, contact companies like TransChem Environmental.