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Our metal chip recycling slip-up led to a nasty surprise

Guys, I had a wake-up call at the plant last week about being careless with chips. We were dumping them straight into the general waste bin to save time. Turns out, when chips are soaked with old coolant, they count as hazardous waste. An environmental check caught us, and now we're facing cleanup costs and a fine, lmao. It's a real mess that could have been avoided with a simple sorting station. If your shop isn't separating chips cleanly, you might want to double-check. Trust me, it's worth the extra minute to do it right.
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jessep16
jessep1614h ago
Picked up a few magnet sweepers for the ferrous chips and a chip wringer for the others, which @betty_morgan might find useful too. We figured out that getting the coolant squeezed out and back into the system was a game changer. It turned a messy hazard into just regular scrap metal and saved us a ton on disposal costs.
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betty_morgan
Coolant mixing got us burned too.
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