A pilot plant has been opened that aims to recycle up to 60% of plastic from science laboratories.
LabCycle has been co-founded by former University of Bath PhD student Helen Liang and aims to turn the former lab material into high grade plastic pellets.
The pilot plant is in a converted greenhouse on campus and is taking waste lab plastics from the University of Bath and local NHS Blood and Transplant to be recycled.
Across the world, an estimated 5.5 million tonnes of plastic petri dishes, tubes, pipettes, and laboratory waste is binned.
Due to the nature of the hazardous chemicals and biological agents used in them, the virgin plastic is usually incinerated after a single use to avoid contamination.
Helen Liang saw how much single-use research equipment was being discarded and went about creating a solution using machinery that washes, shreds and decontaminates the plastic which is then manufactured back into sterile plastic lab equipment.
The discarded lab equipment can be manufactured to be 100% recycled and the company is actively developing this recycling technology to scale up production.
Helen Liang said: “Adopting a circular economy approach involves optimising laboratory practices to minimise waste generation and resource consumption.
“Research and healthcare workers can focus on reducing and reusing single-use plastic items when possible.
“Additionally, proper waste segregation should be emphasised to enable recycling. Encouragingly, more than 90% of our survey participants from the research and healthcare sectors have indicated strong motivation on single-use plastic waste recycling.”
