Waste minimization is an important element of sustainable development. It is concerned with environmental protection and with the reduction of production costs by the reduction of waste at source and by recycling. This guide provides an introduction to the many practical techniques which can be implemented to minimize waste, ranging from simple good housekeeping practice to sophisticated computational and life cycle methods. The book also provides a widely-accepted methodology which can be followed to ensure that waste minimization programmes and projects are successfully implemented.

This nuts and bolts book addresses specific waste minimization and pollution prevention techniques that work in specific types of laboratories for specific wastestreams. Concepts in the book may be directly applied to laboratory operations. In addition, the book illustrates other approaches to laboratory pollution prevention, such as reducing wastewater discharges and fume hood emissions. A wide range of waste types, including hazardous, infectious, medical, PCB, and radioactive, are discussed. This book helps you to develop a broad, institutional framework to plan and set priorities for pollution prevention. It responds to your laboratory's critical need to have readily available techniques and concepts for waste minimization and pollution prevention.

The purpose of this book is to provide a base of information and analysis to assist in implementation of the policy of reducing and/or minimizing hazardous waste generation in manufacturing and more specifically in the process industries. What is the significance of reducing the generation of all process wastes? This book examines the technical nature of waste reduction and the extent to which waste reduction can likely be implemented. Also explored is the extent to which technology itself, as well as information and resources, is a barrier to waste reduction. In what ways are waste reduction decisions dependent on specific circumstances? Can the amount of feasible waste reduction be estimated? Auditing of manufacturing and unit operations and processes are particularly significant and useful in the chemical process industries (food, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, fertilizer, petrochemicals, etc.) since it is estimated that these industries account for more than half of the hazardous wastes generated. This book presents a compilation of complete information on potential sources of waste loss or generation through technical inspection. Also presented are calculation methods for determining air-waste-solid wastes material balances, informational requirements and waste reduction analysis.The reader should find the book useful in the areas of auditing and waste minimization. It is replete with useful information as well as specific case histories, which should make it a practical tool for the user.