How to Reduce Plastic Waste in a Microbiology Lab

Single-use plastics are widely used in science labs, but with increased interest in sustainable practices many labs are reevaluating their workflows that use disposable plastics. Recently, University of Edinburgh scientists sought to document how much single-use plastic waste was generated in their microbiology lab as well as identify reduction and reuse strategies.

The lab sought to move away from the use of single-use plastics wherever possible. In some cases, they would use reusable wooden or metal items instead of plastic. If there were no alternatives, the group focused on reusing plastic equipment by chemically decontaminating the plastic tubes before then autoclaving.

The team spent four weeks documenting the plastic waste produced in regular conditions. They then measured the amount of waste produced over the next seven weeks with new processes to reduce the consumption of single-use plastic. "Once the measures were in place it was quickly clear that large impacts were being seen. The most surprising thing for us was how resilient some plastics are to being autoclaved and therefore how many times they can be re-used. This means that we were able to save more plastic than we originally anticipated," said Amy Pickering, senior author on the paper detailing the effort that was published in Access Microbiology yesterday.

In implementing these replace and reuse practices, the team reported saving 1670 tubes and 1300 loops during a four-week period. This led to a 43-kilogram reduction in waste.

The typical microbiology laboratory uses mostly disposable plastic, which is often not recycled due to biological contamination. In 2014, 5.5 million tons of plastic waste were generated in research laboratories worldwide.