Lab pack services
A lab pack is what you need when the problem is variety rather than volume: a shelf, a store room or a whole laboratory holding dozens of different chemicals in small containers, some of which nobody can identify.
Priced by the work, not by the weight
Everything else in this catalog is measured in drums or tons. A lab pack is measured in decisions. Each container has to be identified, assigned a hazard class, and placed in a drum with other material it cannot react with — oxidizers away from organics, acids away from cyanides and sulfides, water-reactives kept dry — then cushioned with absorbent so nothing breaks in transit. That is a chemist's job done in front of the shelf, which is why a lab pack quote depends on how many different things you have rather than on how much they weigh. It is also why the unknowns matter so much: a container that cannot be identified cannot be safely placed in a drum with anything.
What goes this way
The streams lab pack services handles, and what each one is under the rules — with acceptance decided by a profile rather than by a name on a drum.
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Many, small
Laboratory reagents and standards
Bench chemicals, expired stock and discontinued practicals across every hazard class.
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Characterized first
Unknown and unlabeled containers
Identified in place before packing, because compatibility is what the drum depends on.
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Assessed in place
Shock-sensitive and peroxide-forming material
Old ethers and dried picrates are assessed where they stand rather than picked up and carried.
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Varies
Obsolete pesticide and pool chemistry
Municipal sheds and grounds stores, where stock outlives the people who bought it.
When this is not the right route
The cases where lab pack services is not what you want, and what to use instead.
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You have one stream in bulk rather than many containers
Go to Non-Acute Hazardous Waste Disposal -
The material is P-listed and the question is your generator category
Go to Acute Hazardous Waste Disposal
What you get back
The records lab pack services produces, and what each one is evidence of — because the liability for a waste stays with the generator from the moment it is created until it is destroyed.
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An itemized drum inventory
Every container listed, with what it was and which drum it went into. For a laboratory clear-out this is frequently the first complete chemical inventory the institution has had in years, and it is worth keeping for that reason alone.
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Identification record for unknowns
What the unlabeled containers turned out to be, how that was established, and what was done with anything assessed as unsafe to move.
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Manifest and destination
Per overpack drum, with the codes the contents carried.
Who sends us this
The facility types that usually need lab pack services, each with its own page on what that process produces and under which codes.
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- Determined by characterization
Analytical Laboratories
- Unknowns and legacy chemicals
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- Many, in small volumes
Educational Institutions
- Teaching laboratory chemicals
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- Excluded, with conditions
Government
- Household hazardous waste from collection events
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- F-list / D-codes
Healthcare, Biotech & Pharmaceutical
- Research and manufacturing laboratory chemicals
Before you ask for a price
What generators ask about lab pack services, answered from the rules rather than from marketing copy.
They are characterized before anything is packed — from what is known about the room, from segregation testing where needed, and by treating certain categories as presumed dangerous until shown otherwise. Nothing unidentified goes into a drum with anything else.
No, and please do not move anything crystallized or visibly degraded. An inventory list if you have one is genuinely useful; rearranging the shelf is not, and occasionally it is the dangerous part.
On the number and variety of containers and the proportion of unknowns, rather than on weight. A photograph of the shelves is usually enough to give a realistic figure.
Describe the stream. We will tell you the route.
A description of the process and a rough quantity is enough to start. A Certified Hazardous Materials Manager reads every request, and sometimes the answer is a different service than the one you asked about.