Solid waste in the lab: where does it go when we throw it 'away'?
There's no such place as "away".
Laboratory work consumes huge amounts of energy, water, chemicals and materials, and it produces waste to match. Beyond biohazardous waste, which is treated as a genuine threat to human health and the environment, labs also generate an incredible amount of plastic waste, with academic research labs estimated to produce around 5.5 million tonnes of it every year. Most lab workers know the classic waste categories and where each one is meant to go, but far fewer know what actually happens once it leaves the building, or how much of it is genuinely recyclable rather than just labelled that way.
Biohazardous waste burns hotter, and costs more, than people realise
Biohazardous waste is loaded into an incineration chamber separately from residual waste and burned at roughly 1500°C, compared with the 1100°C typically used for ordinary residual waste. That higher temperature exists for good reason, but it also means biohazard disposal costs considerably more in both money and energy than general waste, which is exactly why uncontaminated packaging and clean plastic shouldn't end up in that stream out of habit or uncertainty. Incinerators vary a great deal between countries and regions in how clean the resulting smoke actually is, which is worth knowing if your institution has a choice of contractor.
Recycling only works if someone wants the material
Well-sorted plastic waste still won't get recycled if there's no demand for that particular type of used plastic. That's why it matters which plastic factories are actually willing to use recycled feedstock in production, and why choosing to buy products that already contain recycled plastic content helps close a loop that sorting alone can't close on its own.
Reducing beats recycling, every time
Some of what a lab generates can be recycled, if not endlessly, then at least a few times over. Sorting waste and sending it for recycling is genuinely worth doing, but it isn't going to solve the climate crisis or make the planet's resources infinite on its own. Reducing consumption in the first place has a bigger impact than recycling ever will: buying products with less packaging, minimising what's used per experiment, and reusing wherever it's practical to do so.
Ask the manufacturers the right questions
Lab users can also influence the products of tomorrow simply by asking manufacturers the right questions, about packaging reduction, plastic type consistency, and genuine takeback options, rather than assuming those decisions are out of their hands.
