IBC tote recycling in Rockville, Maryland

A lab town

Biotech manufacturing uses buffers, media and cleaning solutions by the tote. Biosafety testing adds disinfectants. A tote from either has an SDS and a batch record, which makes the history easy to prove.

That helps in both directions. A biotech tote with a clean record can sometimes be reconditioned for the same reagent; one with an unknown past is recycled.

What the investment means

Maryland Commerce reports the MilliporeSigma move, and any new campus produces construction empties first and process empties later. We do not claim any of those totes are available; we list them as the kind of site this page is written for.

The I-270 corridor

Rockville sits on the I-270 Technology Corridor with Gaithersburg and Germantown. See the Gaithersburg and Germantown pages, and the life-sciences labs page.

Four ZIP codes, one campus move

Rockville has four ZIP codes, 20850, 20851, 20852 and 20854. The point is only that a lab town has more than one address, so say which.

Biosafety testing

Biosafety testing laboratories use disinfectants, buffers and culture media. The disinfectants are the tote streams that need the most care in grading, since a biocidal product can be acute. Read the SDS before you measure anything, and keep disinfectant totes away from buffer totes.

Rockville and the corridor

Rockville is the county seat and the southern anchor of the corridor. It has the most ZIP codes of the three corridor cities. With four codes to choose from, a street address in the request makes the location unambiguous.

Biosafety testing and totes

A biosafety testing lab uses media, buffers and disinfectants. Any of them can arrive in a tote, and the sheet names which. Disinfectant totes in particular should be listed apart from nutrient media.

Campus moves

MilliporeSigma’s move to the Traville Gateway campus is a reminder that labs relocate. A lab clearing a site before a move should list every tote it still holds and say how many are empty, since moving a tote that is not empty is a different matter from retiring one that is.

Asking from Rockville

Rockville’s ZIP codes are 20850, 20852, 20851 and 20854.