My University has built a pharmacy school and a natural products research center by following the medicine men and women into the forest, collecting thousands of plant samples, bringing the materials back to the campus, and extracting tens of thousands of compounds in the search for bioactive anti-cancer agents. 

This type of research produces drum size quantities of little vials filled with unidentified, extracted natural products. The vials can be anywhere from 0 to 100 % liquid, and 0 to 100% solid.  Most materials are extracted by the magic mixtures of Hexane and Ethyl Acetate.

What we do know, and what we can certify about the contents, is pretty limited, but these materials are generally non-halogenated, non PCB, non-corrosive, non-reactive with no metals that matter. Many of these unknown and unidentified materials will be sent for very limited testing, and a majority will be discarded without us ever knowing the name or the structure of the compound.

The production and disposal of this type of material (buckets full of little vials of miscellaneous organic compounds, mixtures and extracts) is similar to the disposal situation when an Organic chemist and their graduate students complete a synthetic project, or just leave the University in the middle of the night.

So, with a waste stream comprised of plant extracts and plant materials in vials, we wrote a disposal profile with our waste vendor for, you guessed it, PLANT EXTRACT/PLANT MATERIAL IN VIALS.

We have used similar profiles with many of the major hazardous waste disposal companies in the country. This profile is for bulked materials; we do not lab pack or used any packing material or absorbents in the drums.

So, sit down with your waste vendor and explain this situation or just copy the information from this message. Bottom line is that you have a waste stream that you can characterize, and the waste companies want your money.

For our GM report, we list the material as: Bulked containers of out of date and out of spec non-acute samples and materials from research activities - Flammable Liquids, Hexane, and Ethyl Acetate.

Source code G11

Discarding off-specification, out-of-date, and/or unused chemicals or products.

Form code W203

Concentrated non-halogenated solvent.

Off-site management method/code H061

Fuel blending prior to energy recovery at another site (waste generated either on-site or received from off-site).

Hope this helps.
Ed