Purchasing

• Order only the exact volumes to be used.
• Work with your Procurement representative to monitor chemical purchases and avoid duplicate orders.
• When ordering chemicals, be aware of any properties that may prevent long term storage.
• Use suppliers who can provide quick delivery of small quantities.
  

Inventory

• Promote sharing among common users.
• Rotate chemical stock to keep chemicals from becoming outdated.
• Locate surplus and unused chemicals, and then attempt to redistribute unused chemicals to other users.
• Attempt to return unused chemicals to vendor. 
  

Operations

• Review experiment protocol to assure that chemical use is minimized.
• Microscale experiments using microtechnology wherever possible. 
• Use less hazardous or non-hazardous substitutes when feasible. 
• Instead of wet chemical techniques, use instrumental methods that will generally require smaller quantities of chemicals. 
• Reuse spent solvent for initial cleaning, and then use fresh solvent only for final rinse. 
• Substitute specialty detergents for sulfuric acid/chromic acid cleaning solutions. 
• Distill and reuse solvents. 
• Avoid mixing hazardous and non-hazardous waste.
• Review literature for additional techniques applicable to your particular processes.