Environmental inventory and audit of selected laboratories found on the ground floor of the St. Miguel building.

Environmental awareness has gained much attention for the past few years. With the mind set of the administration of De La Salle University of making this academic institution into a world class University that would be at par with the leaders of the world, all aspects should be looked into to make sure that we comply with all the regulations set by specific organisations. This dissertation would look into whether or not the laboratories housed at the ground floor of the St. Miguel building comply with standards set by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR). Also, major contributors to environmental degradation will be determined and ranked according to effects. Various laboratories can be found at the ground floor of the St. Miguel building. Each laboratory has its own set of equipment and all employ the use of illuminating and ventilating devices. Power consumption for the entire area under consideration has been assessed and the Thermodynamics laboratory came out to be the lab which used up the most amount of power. Also, for all laboratories, illumination requirement came out to be the major consumer of electricity. Amount of fuel consumed per operation of the boiler was found out to be 27.4 gal of diesel fuel on the average. Amounts of atmospheric emissions based on the average amount of diesel fuel used are as follows: CO2 = 213.4472 kg S02 = 0.63226 kg. Solid wastes generated by the laboratories come from those that are brought in by the students and personnel. Those that come from the actual operations are the welding rods, aluminum scraps and silica. Two sampling points have been identified and these are the discharge and stream points. The wastewater generated by the laboratories exceeded values set for Class C waters for the following parameters: Total Dissolved Solids and Total Suspended Solids for the discharge point Oil and Grease, COD and BOD values for the stream point. Major contributors to environmental degradation have been identified. The factors include the electrical consumption and the consumption of water resources. Though the wastewater exceeded the set standards, the amount released into the environment is very small thus allowing dilution to take place