To ensure the safety of our Custodial Staff in handling sharp objects being discarded, Physical Plant has developed the following policies and procedures.
Sharps must be placed in approved hard cased sharps containers, then deposited by laboratory staff into large MERI (Madison Environmental Resourcing, Inc.) receptacles. UW Physical Plant Custodial staff will not remove or transport sharps or sharps containers. See www.fpm.wisc.edu/chemsafety for more details.
Noninfectious only: Pipettes, pipette tips, fragile lab glass and broken glass must be boxed in a sturdy cardboard box. The box must be sealed with tape and marked Broken Glass. It can then be set outside in the hallway for custodial removal. The preferred box size is 18” x 12” x 10”. Copy paper boxes are acceptable if not overloaded.
Normal lab chemical bottles (non-recyclable) can be placed in the waste baskets if they are unbroken, triple rinsed and dry. It is strongly recommended that the occupant place the empty bottle on top of the trash in the waste basket so that the custodian can see it and deal with it appropriately and carefully. The bottles should be sturdy enough not to break if a plastic bag that it was contained in was set normally on the floor or if they are dumped into a larger receptacle. If they are fragile, they should be packaged as broken glass.
Physical Plant Custodians are instructed to only remove trash that is actually IN A WASTEBASKET or clearly marked as "TRASH." This will preclude accidentally throwing out an occupant's material which is valuable, but left near a waste basket, but which was not intended to be discarded. Printable "TRASH" labels/icons are available on the FPM website.
