Thanks so much for this article, Simone! The issue of sustainability within research has been weighing on my mind a lot of late. The glove recycling initiative is something we really ought to try and get more institutes involved in. I was also thinking about how research campuses can optimise their energy consumption. For instance, the International Centre for Theoretical Sciences (ICTS), Bangalore, uses solar panels to power all their street lamps. They are now working on a plan to use up all their open roof area to set up more panels. These will eventually power all lights, elevators, fans and other minor electrical use during the core working hours of 9am-5pm. Of course, such efforts come easier to a theoretical sciences institute that does not have to deal with heavy equipment and cooling costs, but I do think that this is a course worth following. Most research campuses come with a lot of open spaces and I’m sure one can think of many ways to utilise them in an energy-efficient manner.

This is a great article and you raise a lot of good points! When I bring this up to colleagues, usually there’s a lot of pushback regarding sustainability initiatives under the assumptions that we can’t do much. However, in your article you give a few good ways on how to start, when possible, and gave a great example of how a small change (i.e. recycling glove program) can make a huge difference. You also talk about some of the challenges that labs face such as the fact that people are already too busy to think about sustainability initiatives. I really liked your suggestion that institutions should fund a position dedicated to supervising the management of waste. This sounds relatively simple and do-able and could potentially make a huge difference on the amount of waste produced at the campus level. Finally, I really appreciate you writing this very important article as this is a conversation we must have. We have to start thinking on how to move to more sustainable science practices. Thank you! 

This article makes such an important point, Simone - research that has the explicit aim to develop new environmentally friendly processes/materials/etc can be easily undermined by research practices that are wasteful. I tried to implement the Kimtech glove recycling scheme at my lab in Stockholm, and was really disappointed to find that it is not available in Sweden. I think this was because certain countries have different (and sometimes strange) definitions of “recycling” and “waste” and who owns waste materials, making it difficult for corporate partners to become involved. If not for this difficulty, everyone in my lab was very keen to set up the scheme!

Simone - let me add on my own thanks for writing this article. As a graduate student, I consistently did my best to be as environmental as I could on a personal level, but I had some trouble convincing those around me. Often, the measures I would take would place some difficulty on me (e.g. keeping track of gloves, taking time to rinse or wash used tubes or containers for reuse or recycling, having used seran wrap in a drawer vs. throwing it out and getting fresh each time), which made it difficult for me to convince those around me to follow suit.

When I tried to engage those above me (admins), I frequently got the “Send me some information, I’ll look into it” response, which resulted in them promptly forgetting about it. As you very astutely commented, I was too busy to follow up; it can also be intimidating to follow up with a department chair, for example, as a student. Nobody wants to be a nagger and and risk getting on the bad side of an administrator with some sort of power over you.

Seeing this article has inspired me to contact my university’s environmental services office (why hadn’t I yet thought of that?) to see if I can get them to look into these recycling services you’ve mentioned.

This is such an important topic in science. Especially those of us studying conservation, ecology, and related fields that are centered on sustainability. How could we not think of the waste produced! While autoclaving and sterilizing waste will always be a necessity to ensure we aren’t releasing anything dangerous, toxic, or infectious into the environment, glove recycling post-sterilization is a great way to minimize our waste footprint. I am all for this idea!

You do raise a number of good points, as evidenced by previous peer comments, regarding interest and feasibility of this approach. Like Greta Thunberg is discovering, making people switch from saying they want change to truly implementing change is easier said than done. The more we talk about it and come up with alternatives, the closer we will get to an answer that will serve science and the Earth better than the current model of “use once and trash”.

Your article made me think of a particular researcher I recently  interviewed. She is very cetic of recycling campaigns, partly because  the vast majority of plastic isn’t recycled at all, for a variety of  reasons (in Canada, for instance, only 9% of plastics are recycled).

While we always repeat “reduce, reuse, recycle”, people tend to focus  on the last one (separating recyclable garbage), which might clear our  conscience but doesn’t actually solve the problem. I’ve been thinking a  lot about it recently and I know this is such a delicate issue (it even  feels weird to criticize recycling efforts, something that of course people do because they worry about the environment!)

This is such an important topic and I’m definitely bringing it up to the waste management entity at my institution. Thanks for writing the article! I wonder what the implications are for trusting researchers to  place only non contaminated gloves in the recycling bins and if there would be liability issues for the institutions themselves if there was a case where some kind of unwanted chemical was found to be present in the recycling bins?

I loved your opening paragraph re: people thinking scientists are the solution to our wasteful practises yet we are also a big part of the problem.

Coming from a chemist’s perspective, we use a lot more glass than other life science labs which allows us to reuse or recycle the majority of apparatus we run our reactions in. I try to measure stuff out in reusable measuring cylinders over single-use syringes, run reactions in parallel so I’m only using one syringe to add the same reagent X times etc. Green chemistry is a growing field to replace current practice with less harmful reaction conditions etc.

The challenge of contamination and maintaining good controls between experiments is a contention point, so I try and reduce my plastic usage outside of work in an attempt to compensate for my wasteful practice in work. It’s not ideal but I think if society as a whole reduces its trivial use of single-use items, it means we can still use them where absolutely necessary in research.