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Waste management

2022; Springer Nature; Volume: 23; Issue: 6 Linguagem: Inglês

10.15252/embr.202255283

1469-3178

K. Heran Darwin,

Healthcare and Environmental Waste Management

Opinion4 May 2022free access Waste management K Heran Darwin Corresponding Author K Heran Darwin [email protected] orcid.org/0000-0002-5043-7548 New York University School of Medicine, New York, NY, USA Search for more papers by this author K Heran Darwin Corresponding Author K Heran Darwin [email protected] orcid.org/0000-0002-5043-7548 New York University School of Medicine, New York, NY, USA Search for more papers by this author Author Information K Heran Darwin *,1 1New York University School of Medicine, New York, NY, USA *Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected] EMBO Reports (2022)23:e55283https://doi.org/10.15252/embr.202255283 PDFDownload PDF of article text and main figures. ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack CitationsPermissions Figures & Info The supply shortages caused by the COVID pandemic have had many of us treating our reagents and lab supplies like Gollum did with his “precious.” Who would have ever thought 200 µl pipet tips would become a sought-after commodity? The recent lockdowns and trade disruptions have shone a massive spotlight on our dependency on plastic supplies in research, but perhaps we should have always been more mindful of “consumables.” Even before the pandemic, I was taken aback by the sheer amount of waste we generate in our laboratories. While plastic is cheap, the damage it does to our environment is not; if you’ve ever seen shocking images of dead whales, sliced open to reveal vast quantities of plastics in their stomach that killed them, you would also become more passionate about minimizing plastic waste. Thus, it was not only the recent supply bottlenecks of consumables that had me asking how to replace disposable plastics with reusable alternatives. The ultimate justification for all the waste we generate is that the knowledge gained from it will eventually—and hopefully—be used to improve human health. However, while I think that most of us recycle cans, plastic, and paper at home, and the even more eco-conscious compost food scraps, why, when it comes to the laboratory, do we not make the same considerations when setting up experiments? Don't get me wrong, I fully understand consumables are essential. Working in a BSL3 facility requires that my laboratory uses disposable plastics with one-way tickets to the autoclave and an incinerator or trash pile. Mammalian cell culture also requires pristine consumables for the sake of experimental reproducibility, and the easiest way to achieve this goal is to use single-use plastic flasks and dishes. In my non-BSL3 laboratory, however, we use reusable glass pipettes and test tubes that are cleaned and sterilized by staff—thank heavens for our glassware core. Such facilities are of course a privilege to have; still, laboratories may opt to use disposable plastics because it is cheaper than paying a core facility or hiring someone to wash them. So how else can we reduce waste and wastefulness? When setting up a new laboratory or even a single experiment, consider alternatives to plastic—is there any reason a glass test tube cannot serve the purpose over a forever-in-the-environment plastic one? Can you invest in glass pipets that will last more than a decade instead of repeatedly buying cases of plastic ones? Fun fact: I found a glass pipet with Jan Vilcek’s name on it among my lab’s non-personalized pipets—given that Jan’s laboratory closed well over a decade ago, think of all the plastic this single pipet has saved! Do we need to mix solutions in discardable plastic tubes when a washable beaker could be used? Sure, specific applications like mass spectrometry sometimes require absolutely immaculate vessels, but most of the time this is unlikely to be the case. Perhaps we should all make this mental note: soiled plastic from research laboratories is rarely, if ever, recycled. In addition to plastics, there is chemical and radioactive waste. Many institutions now encourage chemical sharing and alternatives to radioactivity. Even if their motivation is more driven by financial than environmental concerns—the disposal of hazardous reagents is an expensive endeavor—it is encouraging to see institutional efforts to minimize waste. We can also be more mindful and sensible of how we buy reagents; hopefully, most of us make purchases from Sigma and Fisher Scientific more sensibly than some of us may shop at Costco. Another evergreen “what grinds my gears” waste transgression is when people print out papers and let them sit on or by a printer for days until someone (hint: me) finally throws them into a recycling bin. Offenders often print out these papers more than once because they forget they had printed them out before. On the contrary, we have made great progress elsewhere to address the wasteful use of paper. For those of you who don’t know what it was like to submit grant applications before the Obama administration: investigators would print out multiple paper copies of applications that often were 40 pages or longer. These paper piles would then be delivered to the NIH and sometimes dropped off by car at an airport FedEx office at the eleventh hour. The NIH would then mail these hard copies to reviewers, who would later schlep them onto a plane, train, or automobile for the panel meeting. Apparently, some would mark them up well before and ship them to the hotel where the meeting was occurring. I shudder to think how much carbon dioxide was emitted by a single applicant for that process. And, this was not the only source of creating paper and emissions: journals ran a similar print-and-ship hustle back in the day. I would love to know how much we have collectively cut carbon emissions since the advent of PDFs and electronic submissions, which has dramatically reduced the need for trees and fossil fuels for every manuscript or grant application submission. My guess is that transitioning from hard copy/snail mail to PDF/electronic submissions was a significant step toward improving the environment. While I am ambivalent about the development of hard-copy journals becoming relics, it is undoubtedly better for the planet. Hopefully, you're reading this opinion piece on your monitor or tablet and not on paper, which is a nice step toward being green, no? Similarly, small changes could have big effects on our planet's future, especially if many of us participate. Along the lines of minimizing paper waste, consider electronic notebooks. Many institutions have licensed access to electronic notebook applications such as Benchling and OneNote. In addition to cutting down paper waste and providing a more stable long-term record, it helps to save precious lab real estate from having to store 3-ring binders and the like. There has been a lot of commentary that highlights another kind of substantial waste: carbon emissions caused by air travel (Glausiusz, 2021). I am hard-pressed to suggest people should not go to meetings, especially after the isolation during the pandemic. However, keeping certain meetings virtual, such as the occasional grants panel, could take a big bite out of our carbon footprint, not to mention save a lot of money and time on travel. If there is a possibility to drive or take a train to a meeting, these options would do less damage than air travel and are usually much cheaper. For those of us who live in the northeastern USA, it is puzzling that the NIH does not allow reimbursement of travel on Acela trains because of their all-business class status, despite it being often cheaper and environmentally friendlier than flying coach class. Finally, while I think virtual conferences and seminar visits suck, for some people this may be the only opportunity they will have to hear or meet you, so we should not write them off outright. I'm willing to give up the privilege of work travel if it not only gives more access to those who cannot travel, but if it also helps save our planet. Disclosure and competing interests statement The author declares that she has no conflict of interest. References Glausiusz J (2021) Rethinking travel in a post-pandemic world. Nature 589: 155–157CrossrefCASPubMedWeb of Science®Google Scholar Previous ArticleNext Article Read MoreAbout the coverClose modalView large imageVolume 23,Issue 6,07 June 2022This month's cover highlights the article PLETHORA‐WOX5 interaction and subnuclear localization control Arabidopsis root stem cell maintenance by Rebecca Corinna Burkart, Yvonne Stahl and colleagues. The image shows a maximum intensity projection of an Arabidopsis lateral root primordium expressing PLT3‐mVenus (yellow) under its native promoter counterstained with the membrane dye FM4‐64 (magenta). Yellow PLT3‐positive nuclear bodies are seen mainly in the central future columella stem cell (CSC).(Scientific image by Rebecca Corinna Burkart and Yvonne Stahl, Institute for Developmental Genetics, Heinrich‐Heine University, D̈sseldorf, Germany.) Volume 23Issue 67 June 2022In this issue ReferencesRelatedDetailsLoading ...