Within the Nuclear Materials Technology Division of Los Alamos National Laboratory, lead is used as shielding for a variety of operations, including actinide chemistry, weapons production, radiochemistry, and analytical chemistry. In this study, waste minimization issues associated with replacing lead shielding with non-hazardous materials are addressed. These include institutional program available to support this effort, the hazards and accompanying controls grouped with lead shielding, operations that use lead bricks and how this effects the selection of the substitute. Life cycle management issues are also examined. As a final step, an approach to get buy-in from both technical and budget minded employees is presented.