National Institutes of Health Recognized for Environmental Leadership

The U.S. EPA has recognized the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for environmental stewardship in reducing mercury and improving the way it manages material from construction and demolition projects.

The EPA’s voluntary National Partnership for Environmental Priorities (NPEP) challenges businesses and manufacturers to become more environmentally aware and to adopt a resource conversation ethic that results in less waste, increased recycling and more environmentally sound products.

In becoming a partner, NIH has committed to establishing an organizational-wide education and awareness program to eliminate mercury use where alternatives are available, and prevent future installation of mercury switches and other devices in NIH construction. In addition, NIH’s leaders have chosen to do more by improving the way they manage debris from construction and demolition projects. The research agency initiated a pilot project to deconstruct one of its buildings, ultimately avoiding a large extent of land disposal of hazardous materials by extracting and recycling materials. It also recycled 100 percent of the remaining non-hazardous debris.

As part of the deconstruction project, NIH achieved the following: removal and recycling of more than 14,000 mercury-containing fluorescent lamps; removal and recovery of more than 2,800 pounds of mercury-containing debris and other materials, removal and recovery of more than 22,000 pounds of ballast materials, some of which contained PCBs’ and recycling of more than 5,800 tons of non-hazardous debris, such as concrete and scrap metals.

More information is available at www.nih.gov.