• Question: Which types of waste are found and destroyed?

    Asked by Quique to Stuart on 11 Mar 2016.
    • Photo: Stuart Atkinson

      Stuart Atkinson answered on 11 Mar 2016:

      Hi Quique. We find as many types of waste as there are chemical hazards. If you think about the bottles you may have in the school lab, they’ll probably be marked up with either little orange squares of little white diamonds. These tell you if the material is flammable, toxic, corrosive, harmful, irritant, oxidising.

      Chemicals can have other properties, like catching fire if they get dry, or catching fire if they get wet.

      Everyone one of the millions of hazardous chemicals that exist will have 1 or more of the above hazards. What we do with them depends on whether they have a use and can be recycled, or if they are not needed, whether we can treat them safely. If not we will burn the waste, as a last resort.

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