Hailey SeigalIntern Insights is a mini-series that spotlights the interns participating in the Sustainability Internship Program (SIP) and their day-to-day activities and accomplishments. The Office of Sustainability partners with the Student Sustainability Council and sustainability-related units from across the University to provide exciting and meaningful undergraduate internship opportunities for UK students. Interns work with a mentor to support a specific sustainability-related unit on campus, develop an independent project, and participate in a professional development series with a full cohort of interns. In this article, we are excited to share the perspective of Hal Siegel, our Chemical Upcycling intern.
Hello! My name is Hal Siegel, and I am the University of Kentucky’s Chemical Upcycling Intern for the 2025-2026 year.
Through my work with Environmental Quality Management (EQM), I have had the opportunity to contribute to the development of UK’s Chemical Upcycling Program, as well as support projects for my unit that have been interesting to explore, namely an independent project Campus Circularity, and the creation of a hazardous waste webpagefor EQM that provides educational resources to campus laboratories, hospitals, and other campus departments.
EQM manages the flow of waste from campus to off-site processing units, with biological waste and chemical waste among the two most common streams they receive. Their role is to support the university’s research, academic, facility operations, and healthcare programs in achieving environmental compliance and responsible resource use. As their intern, I’ve worked to make it my role to research these principles in practice, while also spreading awareness about prevention. I wanted my project to raise the question: how can waste be reduced before it’s created in the first place?
During the early stages of my internship, I realized there was an opportunity to expand awareness on what classifies as hazardous vs. non-hazardous waste, as well as what qualifies as environmentally responsible by EPA compliance standards. My mentor, Maridely Loyselle, developed a Chemical Upcycling Program aimed at minimizing hazardous waste generation while contributing to the university’s net-zero goals. The program serves as an educational tool for other departments to reference on what materials can be upcycled and how to dispose of them properly. A common example is Acetone, which is used for cleaning glassware and dissolving substances in laboratories; if it’s lightly used, EQM can readily accept it and redistribute it to other labs for experiments. If the Acetone were contaminated, on the other hand, there is a labeling system used by EQM to label the hazardous substance and what type of waste it classifies as, which then gets classified into different categories of hazardous waste in units, i.e. Acids, Toxics, etc.
Through the development of the Chemical Upcycling Program, I was able to create an Excel spreadsheet summary of chemical containers sent to waste disposal over the 2025-2026 year and how much of each was utilized prior to disposal. I also tracked the cost of these chemicals using pricing data from Fischer Scientific to create visualizations of sunk costs, also known as unused material value, that helped to demonstrate the benefits of participating in EQM’s upcycling program. I later compiled this work into my independent project, Campus Circularity, an infographic that presents a visual overview of the program and its impact.
I was initially drawn to the SIP program through an interest in solving real-world problems and a passion for working with chemicals and different materials. As a mechanical engineering major, I’ve gained an understanding of the tools necessary to design and optimize systems, which has complimented my background in sustainability and chemical upcycling and helped me explore ways to make systems more responsible and circular. I’ve found that these areas naturally go hand in hand well, and it’s been rewarding to use these skills to make a positive difference in the world.
