CP Lab Safety Salutes Dr. Ron Najafi, inventor of ECO Funnel, and Celebrates CP Lab Safety’s 20th anniversary on March 13, 2016

Invented and made in the USA, ECO Funnel is now the standard for handling volatile toxic waste in the laboratory

Novato, CA – March 13, 2016

CP Lab Safety ( www.cplabsafety.com) salutes Dr. Ron Najafi, inventor of ECO Funnel®, and celebrates 20 years of environmental activism and stewardship on March 13, 2016.

Back in the 1990s, CP Lab Safety founder Dr. Ron Najafi realized that open waste containers and inappropriate chemical waste handling in laboratories were serious health and safety issues. Scientists were being exposed to toxic fumes and labs were being contaminated. In addition, the volatile chemicals evaporating in the air elevated the risk of fire.

As a solution to these problems, Ron invented the Safety Ecological Funnel. His funnel trapped fumes from open containers, allowing almost any container to become a safe, easy and contained temporary storage solution for waste chemicals.

Ron initially tried to license his invention to other lab safety manufacturers, but no one was interested. He was told that there was no market for such a product, and that scientists don’t care about open waste containers. They said it was best to let laboratory waste evaporate and pollute the environment and claimed that the ECO Funnel solution was ‘anti-business’ since labs would have to spend money to collect waste and dispose of it properly.

With no takers, Ron decided to promote the ECO Funnel on his own. He left his job as a synthetic organic chemist at Applied Biosystems and formed CP Lab Safety Inc. in the basement of his house on March 13, 1996.

Ron was quickly proven to be on the right side of history. As public awareness to environmental pollutants rose, ECO Funnel became a key product for containing those pollutants, reducing the exposure of workers to hazardous substances and eliminating flammable fumes from the workplace. Here are just two of the many accolades that the product has received:

"The Safety ECO Funnel is an ideal containment system that eliminates the danger of ignited vapors and spills from open chemical waste containers."

-Steve Carrol, San Diego Fire Marshal and Biotech Inspector

"The ECO Funnel has helped us meet environmental Regulator requirements while at the same time provide added protection of spill prevention from handling operations and waste streams from equipment."

-Don Pearson, Roche Diagnostics

For CP Lab Safety, the ECO Funnel was just the beginning. Over the last 20 years, the company has expanded its product line to include thousands of products, including lab bottles, lab containers & safety containers, lab glassware, chemistry supplies, Eagle® & Justrite® safety storage cabinets, safety cans, Nalgene® labware, carboys, safety coated glass bottles, vials, and industrial safety supplies.

In December of 2000 Ron Najafi officially started NovaBay Pharmaceuticals and left the day-to-day management of CP Lab Safety to the current CEO, Kelly Farhangi. Kelly and her team moved manufacturing for all ECO Funnel products back to the USA from China, improving quality and actually lowering manufacturing costs. Today CP Lab Safety distributes over 17,000 products worldwide.CP Lab Safety is also registered in the State of California as a Woman Owned Business and a California State Certified Small Business, and a GSA Contractor , providing the company with more avenues in which to spread environmentally sound business practices.