Australia's Science Forum

Hi everyone,

I wanted to know where you print your hazard labels from for waste bottles(e.g. heavy metal, halogenated) or if you make up your own what you include. Some photos would be good if possible.

Thanks in advance
Anastasia

Here is the Lead waste from the CSIS. Copper sulfate, Silver waste, & Lead Waste, the numbers are taken from the disposal number in the book.

Hope this helps.

I've attached the labels I use. These match the CSIS disposal methods. The second attached document summarised the waste disposal procedures, because many people don't have access to CSIS.

I am sure I have seen this info on here already but none of my searches are coming up with the right answers!

What specific labels do you have on your chemical waste bottles? We currently have an assortment of bottles with random waste in it. Some are labeled better than others... I know from the recent westlab webinar that every chemical in the bottle should be on the label. Do you just hand write the chemical when you add it? Do you stick a full GHS label on it? Eg for the heavy metals at the moment it is just labelled "Heavy metals" but nothing about exactly what metals are in there.There is a separate bottle for lead. I want to start doing it all correctly and have purchased new winchesters to make it easy. It has been an absolutely chaotic year and my brain does not want to compute...

I just use paper labels and write in pencil on those. I do put stickers on the bottles re who can use them (the coloured dots). All the heavy metals should be separate, as they're too hard to neutralise when mixed. I learned from somewhere...
Lead waste - add solid sodium carbonate, decant clear supernatant down sink, lead salt will remain as precipitate.
Silver waste - add a sodium chloride solution, decant clear supernatant down sink, silver salt remains as precipitate.
Copper sulfate - displace copper ions by adding steel wool. I leave my copper waste in ice cream containers on a bench until the water evaporates and scrape the residue into the rubbish.
Of course, you may know this already. Good luck with the labelling.

Lead waste 39 Add Sodium carbonate solid to waste in bottle. When it has cleared it can go down the sink to waste, the Clear ONLY. small lead salt will remain on the bottom, takes years for a large bottle to fill with the salt at the bottom. Silver waste 43 add Sodium Chloride solution any conc, to bottle. When settled clear can go down the sink to waste. A small silver salt will remain on the bottom. The numbers are from the CSIS of disposal waste.

Copper sulfate we recycle this by evaporation, and drying the blue crystals. They can go around again.

Bump for new members who could not find my labels

NITRATES - how do you do these for disposal? In the webinar we were told not to add nitrates to the heavy metals bottles. Do you have a dedicated nitrates bottle that just has everything? lead, copper, silver etc or do you have individual nitrate waste bottles? Sorry for keeping on coming back to this but I want to get it right and not have to re-do it later. Our current system is quite a mess...

We have individual waste bottles, eg, silver, lead, copper etc. We don't have a nitrates waste. If we should have one please let me know!

I have just emailed the guy who did the webinar to clarify. I may have remembered it wrong and it isn’t really covered in the notes. I will let you know!

For an example, this is from RiskAssess for sodium nitrate.
Disposal
Retain for collection by a waste service. Do not place in the garbage. <100 g/day may be dissolved in 10 times the mass of water and poured down the drain.

If you don't have RiskAssess, use the SDSs.

Marama T wrote: ↑27 Oct 2022, 12:15 For an example, this is from RiskAssess for sodium nitrate.
Disposal
Retain for collection by a waste service. Do not place in the garbage. <100 g/day may be dissolved in 10 times the mass of water and poured down the drain.

If you don't have RiskAssess, use the SDSs.

Thanks Marama T, it's not so much WHAT needs to be stored for disposal but HOW it needs to be stored. It's to do with nitrates forming nitrogen dioxide if the waste bottle being used has anything acidic in it.

OK so apparently nitrates are supposed to be kept separate with nothing acidic going in with them. All metal nitrates can go in that one. All other metals can go in together as well. I thought for some reason lead had to be separate and possibly copper as well, but as long as each chemical is labelled on the bottle, the mixed metals is OK. I hope this info helps others who might be as confused as me! When I did this years ago at my old school I just kept using the bottles that were already there and they never got full during my time so I didn't have to deal with disposal!

Where did you find this out? Are you DoE school?
I was having a look at CSIS and I can't find anything that says you can store all metals together (other than heavy metals) but things like silver, copper, lead were separate. And we have SO many waste bottles that if what your saying is correct, will definitely help us!

labbassistant wrote: ↑28 Oct 2022, 07:00 Where did you find this out? Are you DoE school?
I was having a look at CSIS and I can't find anything that says you can store all metals together (other than heavy metals) but things like silver, copper, lead were separate. And we have SO many waste bottles that if what your saying is correct, will definitely help us!

I was also wondering this??

I have just deleted my reply as I thought I should check with the person before sharing their name and website publicly.

So this is what I'm thinking I need to set up:

Mixed Metals (no nitrates)

Mixed Nitrates (keep alkaline)

Dichromate Waste

Permanganate Waste

Organic Waste (Halogenated)

Organic Waste (Non-Halogenated)


Is there anything I've missed? These are just the liquids.

What do you do with your solid waste? Eg copper carbonate heated becomes copper oxide and needs to be kept for disposal or <1g/day in garbage. Do you just keep it in a container labeled copper oxide waste? Or do you put <1g/day in the garbage every day until it's all gone?

The info about the nitrates and metals is from Michael Pola who did the Westlab Safe Disposal of Chemicals in Schools webinar online at the end of August. His company is envirostore and they do chemical waste in Victoria (I am in NSW though).

I am not in a DoE school so maybe check with your local chemical waste collector to see what they require.