ABOUT THE WASTE MANAGEMENT PAGE

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This page was conceived by the Students for a Greener Berkeley, a student organization founded by MSE graduate students Becca Jones and Gabe Harley. This student group performed a waste audit of HMMB, in which the trash and recycling over a 24 hour period was dug through, sorted and weighed. This effort was covered in the Berkeley Engineering News. A brief report of the findings of the waste audit, as well as suggestions for reducing the waste streams can be found here. The waste audit produced a few notable findings:

1. The overwhelming majority of the trash (by mass and by volume) consists of food-related waste, including packaging, refundable or recyclable bottles and cans, disposable coffee cups, as well as actual food
2. A day's trash contains a significant amount of recyclable white paper.
3. Hazardous and toxic substances managed to find their way into the regular waste stream

This page is part of an effort to reduce waste in HMMB by listing ways to reduce, reuse, and recycle. In addition, this page will list proper methods for disposal of dangerous materials in an effort to decrease environmental impact and increase laboratory safety. In order to avoid the possibility of changes in the policies of UC, most information on hazardous wastes are directly linked to official websites.

The information on these pages was collected by Mike Scarpula and Mark Jhon