Label commercial products not only with their names, but also the manufacturer's name and address. This latter information is essential to obtaining an MSDS for the material. Depending upon your personal experience, knowledge and comfort level with handling chemicals, here are some steps you can take to help REM personnel dispose of your unknown. It is not necessary to obtain all the following information, but any information you can provide will make disposal faster, safer and cheaper. If you have the equipment and chemical expertise, basic qualitative analysis and other tests can be performed on the unknown chemical.
Spectroscopic techniques can also provide valuable information.
REM will place you in contact with laboratories on campus providing these analytical services. However, closing the container after each use is not always convenient for some researchers, especially those generating hazardous waste many times a day. Quite often a funnel is left in the waste jug all of the time. Liquid Safety Disposal Can from Fischer Scientific. The can features a wide mouth with a spring loaded stainless steel lid and is widely used by research institutions and industry.