Mapping the plastic waste produced from laboratory activities -the first step towards a sustainable lab

Post written by undergraduate student, Millie Newmarch. The project was supervised by Dr Eleni Routoula in the department of Chemical and Biological Engineering. 

Chemical and Biological Engineering (CBE) research is crucial for realising a sustainable future, with numerous ongoing projects that contribute to the creation of a resource-efficient society. Specifically, Sustainability (Circular Economy) is a key area of research with multiple academics running high-stake, external-facing projects in collaboration with industry. 

This research takes place in University labs, so an obvious question is, how sustainable is the work carried out? At the start of our work, a quick walk around the labs revealed a considerable amount of single-use plastic waste in the form of pipette tips, plastic tubes of various sizes and uses, culture plates and packaging.

Reducing the overall environmental impact of single-use plastic is crucial for meeting net-zero targets. Millie Newmarch set out to investigate the issue in order to understand the plastic waste produced from laboratory activities, how it is handled, if (and how) it could be monitored, and whether strategies could be identified to reduce it. 

Disposable lab plastic items by quantity.

Initial findings indicated that waste produced from laboratory activities is poorly documented and so waste type, plastic composition and weight is impossible to determine accurately. Given the interdisciplinary nature of the CBE department and the combination of both taught and independent lab research, it is challenging to pinpoint specific waste streams and identify and implement monitoring, categorisation and recycling/minimisation solutions applicable to all activities. However, a Departmental structure offers a unique opportunity for identifying a fully-tailored approach towards single-use plastic waste. 

This project consisted of three phases; identification of plastic types in waste streams (Phase 1), quantification of plastic per stream or type (Phase 2), and identification of applicable minimisation strategies (Phase 3). 

The results were illuminating. Single-use plastics accounted for over 14% of all orders, with pipette tips accounting for 65% of all single-use items, followed by gloves and microtubes (1-2mL volume). From the data we estimate reducing pipette tip usage by 5% could result in a saving of 24,500 tips and £850.

Disposable lab plastic items by weight.

When plastic waste was quantified based on weight rather than quantity, pipette tips fell to the fifth largest factor, behind micro-well plates, centrifuge tubes, stripettes and gloves. This ranking change indicated the importance of choosing metrics to make decisions. Based on this information, simply minimising the use of pipette tips would not be the best approach when a holistic approach to plastic reduction is considered. 

Reducing the impact of single use plastics through minimisation, reuse, centralised ordering, sustainable sourcing, improved experimental/laboratory activity planning and end-of-life management strategies were identified. However, these strategies are fraught with challenges due to cross-contamination and the unquantifiable presence of hazardous substances in waste streams. As a result the reuse of single-use items is unlikely to have a large impact. Instead,  responsible procurement practices and devising effective end-of-life solutions should be prioritised until more feasible recycling and reuse solutions emerge. 

That being said, this project highlighted the need for more in-depth understanding of specific laboratory activities, with the aim of developing waste minimisation strategies applicable to waste streams produced from different areas of research and types of laboratory activities. 
A future aspect of this work would be to characterise waste per lab or academic team, in order to identify common (or not) aspects and put waste production into perspective, or propose more tailored strategies on a case-by-case basis.

This work successfully scraped the tip of the iceberg by providing insight into a little before considered waste. It would be interesting for each department in the faculty (and different faculties, and different institutions) to run this assessment using the same or similar measurement parameters (quantity, weight). This would help characterise the plastic waste streams from laboratory activities under different lights, and come up with viable mitigation strategies.