research paper on single use plastic

Single-use plastics: Production, usage, disposal, and adverse impacts

Affiliations.

• 1 School of Environment, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China; Key Laboratory of Cleaner Production and Integrated Resource Utilization of China National Light Industry, Beijing Technology and Business University, Beijing 100048, China.
• 2 School of Environment, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China.
• 3 School of Environment, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China; Basel Convention Regional Centre for Asia and the Pacific, Beijing 100084, China. Electronic address: [email protected].
• PMID: 32892042
• DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.141772

Single-use plastics (SUPs), invented for the modern "throwaway society," are intended to be used only once. They are being increasingly produced and used globally, most notably as packaging or consumables, such as SUP shopping bags or disposable tableware. We discuss how most SUPs are landfilled or incinerated, which causes pollution, consumes valuable land, and squanders limited natural resources. Only relatively small amounts are currently recycled, a hindrance to the concept of a circular economy. Moreover, SUP litter aggregation in the natural environment is a major concern. This article briefly reviews SUP contamination in various environmental media including soil, rivers, lakes and oceans around the world. In the face of mounting evidence regarding the threat posed to plant growth, soil invertebrates and other land animals, (sea) birds, and marine ecosystems, there is a growing push to minimize SUPs. Regulatory tools and voluntary actions to reduce SUP usage have been put forward, with some suggestions for minimizing SUP waste.

Keywords: Consumption; Environmental and ecological impact; Intervention and actions; Production; Single-use plastics.

Copyright © 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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Single-Use Plastics in the Food Services Industry: Can It Be Sustainable?

• Published: 12 April 2021
• Volume 3 , article number  7 , ( 2021 )

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• Jovan Tan   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-1565-5301 1 ,
• Sandeep Kumar Tiwari 2 &
• Seeram Ramakrishna   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-8479-8686 1  

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The topic of single-use plastic (SUP) has attracted considerable global attention. Even though it has been investigated extensively by the research community, there is no existing literature that succinctly reviews the progress and developments of its uses, associated impacts, viable alternatives, and end-of-life scenarios through the lens of the food services industry (FSI). Through our review, we attempted to answer the question if the use of SUP foodware in the FSI can be more sustainable, and if possible, participate in the circular economy. We have determined that it is technologically possible for disposable foodware to achieve circularity using bio-based biodegradable foodware materials, organic recycling, and industrial symbiosis. All three components need to be operated and utilized simultaneously for any disposable foodware to be truly circular. However, we found the adoption rate of these technologies to be relatively low, and we discussed the reasons for our findings in detail. We proposed using policy action as an intervention mechanism to mitigate this situation and encourage greater adoption.

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Tan, J., Tiwari, S.K. & Ramakrishna, S. Single-Use Plastics in the Food Services Industry: Can It Be Sustainable?. Mater Circ Econ 3 , 7 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42824-021-00019-1

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Single-Use Plastics 101

Here’s everything you need to know about the most ubiquitous (and avoidable) kind of plastic waste: the kind made to be tossed in mere minutes.

Matt Rath/Chesapeake Bay Program

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A straw with our iced coffee, a plastic bag to carry our takeout, a wrapper on a candy bar: taken individually, each seems harmless. These modern conveniences are so ubiquitous—and so quickly thrown out—that they hardly register in our minds. But single-use plastics come with a steep environmental price—one that we’ll be paying off for millennia. Our plastic addiction is having a devastating impact on our oceans, our wildlife, and our health.

What are single-use plastics?

Why is single-use plastic bad, single-use plastics and pollution, should we ban single-use plastics, major corporations and single-use plastics, avoiding single-use plastics.

Put simply, single-use plastics are goods that are made primarily from fossil fuel–based chemicals (petrochemicals) and are meant to be disposed of right after use—often, in mere minutes. Single-use plastics are most commonly used for packaging and serviceware, such as bottles, wrappers, straws, and bags.

Though plastic—a chain of synthetic polymers, essentially—was invented in the mid-19th century, it wasn’t until the 1970s that its popularity skyrocketed. Manufacturers began replacing traditionally paper or glass staples with lighter or more durable and affordable plastic alternatives; plastic jugs replaced milk jars, for instance. According to a 2017 study titled "Production, Use, and Fate of All Plastics Ever Made," published in the journal Science Advances , 8.3 billion metric tons of plastics have been produced since the 1950s, and half of that in the past 15 years alone.

There are many uses for plastic that are not only reasonable but important, such as surgical gloves, or straws for people with disabilities . But these cases make up a small fraction of single-use plastic. According to the 2017 study, more than half of non-fiber plastic, which excludes synthetic fabrics like polyester and nylon, comes from plastic packaging alone, much of which is for single-use items.

David via Flickr

Single-use plastics are a glaring example of the problems with throwaway culture. Instead of investing in quality goods that will last, we often prioritize convenience over durability and consideration of long-term impacts. Our reliance on these plastics means we are accumulating waste at a staggering rate. According to the United Nations Environment Programme, we produce 300 million tons of plastic each year worldwide, half of which is for single-use items. That’s nearly equivalent to the weight of the entire human population.

Reducing plastic use is the most effective means of avoiding this waste (and the impacts linked to plastic production and use). Carrying reusable bags and bottles is one great way to avoid single-use plastics in our day-to-day lives; more on preventing plastic waste can be found below.

Recycling more plastic, more frequently, reduces its footprint. Polyethylene terephthalate, one of the most commonly recycled plastics and the material that makes up most water and soda bottles, can be turned into everything from polyester fabric to automotive parts. But the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) found that a whopping 91 percent of all plastic isn’t recycled at all. Instead it ends up in landfills or in the environment. Single-use plastics in particular—especially small items like straws, bags, and cutlery—are traditionally hard to recycle because they fall into the crevices of recycling machinery and therefore are often not accepted by recycling centers.

Left alone, plastics don’t really break down ; they just break up. Over time, sun and heat slowly turn plastics into smaller and smaller pieces until they eventually become what are known as microplastics. These microscopic plastic fragments, no more than 5 millimeters long, are hard to detect—and are just about everywhere. Some microplastics are even small by design, like the microbeads used in facial scrubs or the microfibers in polyester clothing. They end up in the water, eaten by wildlife, and inside our bodies. They’ve even made their way up to the secluded Pyrenees mountain range and down to the bottom of the Mariana Trench. For wildlife, microplastics can be particularly dangerous; when eaten they can easily accumulate inside an animal’s body and cause health issues, like punctured organs or fatal intestinal blockages.

A laboratory photograph of microplastics found in the Corsica River in the Chesapeake Bay watershed, Maryland

Will Parson/Chesapeake Bay Program

Exposure to microplastics, as well as the chemicals that are added to plastics during processing, harm our health. Many of the chemicals in plastics are known endocrine disruptors, and research has suggested that human exposure could cause health impacts including hormonal imbalances, reproductive problems like infertility, and even cancer. The phthalate DEHP, as just one example from dozens, is often added to plastic goods like shower curtains and garden hoses to make them more flexible—but was also found to be a probable human carcinogen by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Martin Grimm/Picture-alliance via Associated Press

Although single-use plastic pollution accumulates most visibly on our streets, in fact our water suffers even more. Litter can be the first stage in a waste stream that enters waterways as plastics tossed on the street are washed away by rain or travel via storm drains into rivers and streams. Our waterway plastic pollution is particularly concentrated: Just 10 rivers carry 93 percent of the world’s total amount of plastic that enters the oceans via rivers each year.

In 2015 researchers from the University of Georgia estimated that between 4.8 million and 12.7 million metric tons of plastic per year make their way into the oceans via people living within 30 miles of a coast. The majority of this pollution—dominated by single-use plastic waste—comes from countries lacking infrastructure to properly manage waste, particularly in Asia. India, for example, generates 25,940 tons of plastic waste every day but collects only 60 percent of it. (It’s also important to remember that waste management is just one part of the global materials cycle. For instance, a lot of the plastic produced in Asian countries is for products that serve U.S. demand—and the United States often sends plastic waste back to these countries for recycling.)

An albatross found dead with a belly full of plastic on Midway Atoll

Forest and Kim Starr via Flickr

Marine animals bear the burden of this influx of garbage into their habitats. Beached whales have been found with stomachs full of plastic trash. And recent studies found plastic in the guts of 90 percent of the seabirds tested and 100 percent of the turtles. Alarmingly, scientists estimate that there will be more plastic than fish in the ocean by weight in 2050. Not only is plastic estimated to kill millions of marine animals and seabirds each year, but it’s also contaminating seafood that humans have relied on for millennia, particularly with microplastics in animals’ guts.

Our addiction to plastic also has negative impacts on the climate. A 2019 report by the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) showed that plastic production contributes to planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions at every point in its life cycle. The process of drilling for plastic’s source materials, oil and gas, leads to methane leaking and flaring and is often combined with clearing forests and wetlands that otherwise would have sequestered carbon. Refineries where crude oil is turned into plastic make up one of the most greenhouse gas–intensive industries in the manufacturing sector. And “cracker plants”—which break, or “crack,” ethane molecules, a component of natural gas, into the chemical building blocks of plastic products—are energy intensive and highly polluting. According to the CIEL report, in 2015 a mere 24 of these ethane cracker facilities in the United States had the combined carbon output of 3.8 million passenger vehicles. And the recent fracking boom, resulting in a surplus of oil, is fueling a subsequent rise in cracker plants, too. That’s bad news for our carbon reduction goals: If plastic production continues unabated, its greenhouse gas emissions could reach 1.34 gigatons per year by 2030—equal to adding nearly 300 new coal-fired power plants—even as the need to curb global climate change becomes more urgent.

Plastic pollution—whether in our oceans, piling up on our coastlines, or contributing to our climate crisis—impacts vulnerable communities first. Even if plastic doesn’t end up in the ocean, recycled plastic is often exported from high-income countries to developing countries to process. But the sheer amount of plastic waste inundates communities until they are drowning under thousands of tons of plastic trash. This is the case particularly in Southeast Asia, which has begun to import much of the plastic that used to go to China for recycling. Not only does the waste destroy the land itself, but when plastic is incinerated (as is the case for unrecyclable plastic at some illegal facilities) its toxic fumes quickly become a health hazard for residents, leading to everything from skin rashes to cancer. Such is the case with many environmental crises: the worst effects are pushed onto overburdened communities with the fewest resources to fight back.

Natasha Chub-Afanasyeva via Flickr

Plastic is putting a strain on waste management systems, our oceans, and vulnerable communities the world over. A wave of single-use plastic bans is sweeping the country and the globe—most often on plastic bags, straws, stirrers, and takeout clamshells. (Some places are going so far as to ban single-use plastics entirely; most notably, India intends to go this route by 2022.) Among the U.S. cities to outlaw plastic straws are Malibu, Berkeley, Seattle, and Miami Beach. Plastic bag bans—ideally accompanied by a fee on paper bags—are also catching on. New York State and Hawaii just passed theirs, set to go into effect in 2020, and California’s bag ban, which was passed in 2014, has been shown to have reduced plastic bag usage by 85 percent (with some customers opting to pay a 10 cent fee for thicker plastic bags) and has reduced coastal pollution.

What do the bans accomplish? They prevent millions of tons of plastic from entering the waste stream each year. And when it comes to waste that lasts forever, every ton counts. In New York, 23 billion plastic bags are used by residents each year. Not only does banning single-use plastic reduce pollution, but it also reduces demand for plastic production that’s contributing to global climate change. But beyond these impacts, the bans have cultural effects. Companies are forced to innovate, rethinking their designs and sourcing sustainable materials. And they help shift consumer mind-sets, as people begin to recognize that exorbitant and avoidable waste is not sustainable.

Juan Cristobal Cobo/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Large producers of single-use plastics can make a big environmental impact. As part of the Break Free From Plastic movement, Greenpeace volunteers conducted an audit of plastic pollution along coastlines, sifting through tens of thousands of individual pieces across 42 countries to identify the pollution’s sources. They discovered that Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, and Nestlé products were found most often. Coca-Cola has said that it alone produces three million tons of plastic packaging each year, equivalent to a terrifying 200,000 plastic bottles per minute. Policies like bottle bill laws—which generally require retailers to add a fee on individual bottles, which can then be partially redeemed by customers when they recycle—are a way to increase corporate responsibility for waste while providing a monetary incentive to recycle. In Taiwan, which was once overflowing with so much trash that it spurred public protest and the nickname “Garbage Island,” companies now either manage their own waste or subsidize government-run infrastructure. Accompanied by high social accountability and musical garbage trucks, that strategy has proved wildly effective: The island now reports recycling rates above 50 percent.

Some companies are taking initiative on their own. McDonald’s swapped its plastic straws for paper at its United Kingdom and Ireland restaurants. Disney is eliminating single-use plastic straws and stirrers at all its theme parks, resorts and properties. And Starbucks, which uses an estimated one billion plastic straws per year, is phasing them out in favor of paper ones. These actions are a response to calls for change and shifting consumer habits.

Fiona Goodall/Getty Images

Individual choices —and the collective shifts they bring about—add up quickly. Making just one simple swap, like purchasing a reusable water bottle, can spare the environment hundreds of plastic bottles each year. Here are a few more tips for ridding your life (and your community) of single-use plastics for good.

• Always pack a reusable bag when shopping. (And yes—reusable totes are better for the environment than plastics, recent media claims aside .)
• Cook more often, to reduce your use of plastic-heavy takeout containers.
• Buy in bulk. Avoid individually packaged goods, like snack packs.
• Though buying online sometimes has a lower carbon footprint than shopping in a store ( skip the express delivery option, if you can), online shipments are still chock-full of plastic. Your best bet to reduce your footprint and plastic waste? Walk, bike, or take public transit to buy in-person.
• Avoid plastic wrap altogether by storing leftovers in reusable containers. Try reusable and compostable beeswax wrap for an easy and decorative option.
• Buy a metal or bamboo reusable straw. Pack it alongside reusable cutlery (like wood, bamboo, or metal chopsticks) for sustainable eating on the go.
• Talk to the owners of the restaurants you frequent. Ask if they have nonplastic alternatives to plastic straws, stirrers, or bags.
• Speak out in support of local plastic bans, whether by calling your local government representative, submitting an op-ed to your city’s newspaper, or simply starting conversations with neighbors.
• Let companies that make your favorite products know that you care about the packaging. Tweet, call, or send letters to these companies to ask them to switch to more durable, recyclable, compostable, renewable, and/or recycled-content packaging with less fossil fuel–derived plastic.

This NRDC.org story is available for online republication by news media outlets or nonprofits under these conditions: The writer(s) must be credited with a byline; you must note prominently that the story was originally published by NRDC.org and link to the original; the story cannot be edited (beyond simple things such as grammar); you can’t resell the story in any form or grant republishing rights to other outlets; you can’t republish our material wholesale or automatically—you need to select stories individually; you can’t republish the photos or graphics on our site without specific permission; you should drop us a note to let us know when you’ve used one of our stories.

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• v.5(12); 2019 Dec 26

Can Laboratories Move Away from Single-Use Plastic?

In September, Ph.D. student Samantha Seah challenged herself to collect all the plastic and nitrile waste she used in her lab in 1 day. Pipette tips, tubes, gloves, they quickly added up. At the end of her working day, Seah, who studies droplet microfluidics at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, weighed the waste. It totaled 230 g. In a year, she estimates, that would add up to about 60 kg, or the weight of a small person.

Scientists are trying to reuse and recycle single-use lab plastics like these. Credit: Shutterstock.

Seah wasn’t the first to try to measure how much plastic gets tossed in the trash in labs. In 2015, a team at the University of Exeter did a back-of-the-envelope calculation to estimate how much plastic waste scientific labs generate in a year. The answer was over 5.5 million metric tons ( Nature 2015, DOI: 10.1038/528479c ). The researchers based their estimate on extrapolations from their biosciences department. More accurate numbers for how much scientific research contributes to global consumption of single-use plastic do not seem to exist.

Seah’s efforts were part of a social media campaign started by a group of young researchers who worked with the publisher eLife Sciences Publications. The campaign aimed to show how much single-use plastic was being used by scientists across the world. In #LabWasteDay posts on Twitter, the group showed pictures of members with their plastic waste, together with an extrapolated amount of waste that they would generate in a year. They asked others to do the same. The types of plastic lab products were diverse, including pipet tips, used gloves, weighing boats, tubes, flasks, reagent bottles, cuvettes, and more. “I was definitely shocked by how much I used, and I think many people were, too,” Seah tells C&EN.

But can all that plastic waste be prevented?

In recent years, amid stories about plastic waste ending up on beaches and even in our diets , public opinion has started to turn against plastics. What was once considered a wonder material that was cheap, light, and clean is now being seen by many as a serious environmental problem. That shift in opinion has led some universities to rethink plastic-use policies, with much of the drive for change coming from younger members of the research community. In the UK, the University of Leeds is one of several universities that have made an ambitious pledge to completely cut out single-use plastic .

But while alternatives to plastic cups and cutlery can be found, replacing single-use items in the lab is not always so simple. For example, replacing plastic petri dishes for cell culture with glass ones might seem like a sensible switch, but the costs of using glass dishes are around 30 times as much as those of plastic ones, making it cost prohibitive for labs that use a lot of them.

Despite the challenges, some departments at Leeds have already made changes. The School of Earth and Environment is switching to reusable centrifuge racks for holding centrifuge tubes before and after separation rather than buying sets of centrifuge tubes that are preracked in polystyrene.

“To improve sustainability in science, we must work collaboratively with researchers,” says Martin Farley, sustainable labs adviser at University College London (UCL). UCL is also the developer of the Laboratory Efficiency Assessment Framework , or LEAF, which is a new, independent standard for good environmental practice in labs. The standard recommends ways that lab users can reduce waste, energy, plastic, and water in the lab. The scheme was piloted at several universities in the UK during the 2018–2019 school year and has just started its second year of operation. Participants are awarded bronze, silver, or gold status depending on their performance in meeting the standard.

The photo Samantha Seah shared as part of the social media campaign #LabWasteDay. Credit: Samantha Seah.

UCL is another university that has pledged to get rid of single-use plastic ; its deadline is 2024. But Farley says that while the challenge might seem big right now, the trick is to celebrate every victory in reducing plastic use along the way, remembering the three Rs: reduce, reuse, and recycle.

The biggest impact that labs can make on plastic waste, Farley says, is reducing the amount of plastic that labs use in the first place. For example, scientists could use smaller flasks or tubes if appropriate or buy products that use less material. At two institutes of the Vienna BioCenter, researchers now use refillable boxes for their pipet filter tips instead of buying new boxes every time they need more tips. They also use glass pipettes when possible.

The institutes made this change after requests from students and postdocs, says Martin Radolf, Head of Environmental Health and Safety at the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP) and Institute of Molecular Biotechnology (IMBA), which share core facilities. His colleague Amina Zankel invited lab suppliers to discuss how they could help the institutes reduce their reliance on single-use plastic. Under the new system, researchers can refill their boxes of pipet filter tips from supplies held in the stockroom (often referred to as stores in Europe). While larger plastic pipettes are still available, Radolf says, he came up with a cunning idea to encourage people to use glass alternatives that can be washed at the sterile processing facility that is part of the scientific core facilities shared by the IMP and IMBA. “For plastic pipettes they have to go down to the cellar, to the stores,” he explains. “The glass pipettes will be placed somewhere nearer the lab,” making them more accessible than the plastic ones. Moreover, glass pipettes are free to the scientists and won’t affect lab budgets.

Scientists looking to reduce their overall plastic consumption can also pick vendors that have zero-waste manufacturing facilities or that minimize packaging when shipping and designing products. Another approach to reducing plastics is to pool resources. For example, scientists can reduce the number of reagent bottles used by buying chemicals in bulk and sharing them with other labs. At the University of Michigan, the ChEM Reuse Program allows research and teaching labs to obtain products they need for free if they’re left over from another lab. The sharing system includes chemicals and equipment, as well as materials like pipetting accessories and conical centrifuge tubes.

When it comes to reusing plastic in the lab, there is one significant hurdle: contamination. For many labs, especially biological ones, avoiding contamination and keeping work sterile is incredibly important. But for other labs, where contamination is less of an issue, researchers could consider reusing items like weighing boats and gloves if possible, says Rachael Relph of My Green Lab, a San Diego-based nonprofit organization that works with labs to make their work more sustainable . For example, she says, accuracy or contamination might be less of an issue in teaching labs. But Relph also points out that sometimes reusable items can have comparable performance to single-use items, even in sterile procedures.

That’s been the finding of Grenova, a lab equipment firm founded by Ali Safavi in 2014. Safavi has a background in equipment that handles and moves liquids. These machines combine high-throughput and automated systems but often use a lot of plastic consumables, which can add to their financial and environmental costs.

His firm has created washing systems that can take pipet tips that are intended to be single use and then wash and sterilize them for reuse multiple times. The machine is a little like a customizable dishwasher for pipet tips. Users load it with their tips and then specify what cleaning reagent to use or if there should be soaking, ultraviolet light irradiation, or sonication steps. Different users have optimized washing protocols to get pipet tips clean enough for different lab techniques, including mass spectrometry or toxicology and immunology assays. Earlier this year, for example, researchers at the National Institutes of Health’s National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences found their washed pipettes gave the same results as new tips for preparing small-interfering-RNA screening libraries. Since 2015, Safavi says, his company has helped labs in academia and industry reuse 93 million pipet tips, and his customers have reported that some tips can be reused 25–40 times.

Safavi hopes that cleaning tips will in time reduce the number of tips that end up in biohazard waste. Currently, many pipet tips land in biological waste management streams, where they are bagged, collected in special bins, autoclaved, and then sent to special commercial vendors for disposal. Safavi instead envisions tips used in biomedical research getting decontaminated enough through his washing machines that they can go into recycling streams when discarded.

Credit: C&EN/Shutterstock.

Recycling plastics is often a physical process . Recycling centers wash the plastics, grind them up, and then melt them to form new products. These centers need each recycling stream to contain a single type of plastic, and cross contamination can be a problem. But chemical or biological contamination introduces another wrinkle in recycling lab plastics. Even disposing of plastic waste from labs requires dealing with this contamination. The waste sometimes has to be washed with chemicals or autoclaved before sending it to a landfill or a specialist handling company that will incinerate it.

And even if the plastics are not contaminated, many local facilities or recycling contractors are hesitant to take materials from labs for general recycling because of concern about contamination. Worries about contamination even prevent scientists from recycling plastics in the lab. The University of Edinburgh recently surveyed scientists and found that while 75% reported recycling some types of plastic, many said that they were “not allowed” to recycle anything from a lab in general recycling streams.

In Vienna, Radolf plans to start asking his researchers to separate out the plastic packaging from cell culture labs. For safety’s sake, he adds, they will treat the waste as potentially contaminated and autoclave it, but then they will send it for general recycling. Currently, though, most recycling of lab plastic waste comes from take-back schemes with individual suppliers. Five years ago, the School of Chemistry at the University of Edinburgh became the first European university to take part in the Kimberly-Clark program that recycles single-use nitrile gloves .

Tim Calder, who manages the program at the university, says that all researchers need to do is peel off their gloves into one of four bins for separate waste streams. Noncontaminated gloves can go to either a landfill or a recycling facility, nonhazardous contaminated gloves go to an incinerator, and hazardous contaminated gloves go to a hazardous waste processing facility. When the bins get full, the facilities team collects the gloves for recycling. Once there is enough to fill a pallet, a contractor picks up the gloves and grinds them to make new materials for products such as patio furniture and planters.

Other universities are participating in take-back schemes, including those for Styrofoam boxes, pipet tip boxes, and the cartridges used in water purification systems. All these materials can be taken back by companies and either reused or recycled into different plastic products.

For years, there has been a disconnect between the way scientists deal with plastic waste in their private lives and the way they do so in the lab, Relph says. But more and more, waste management companies and manufacturers are realizing the value of recycling materials from the lab. But, she adds, as great as it is to recycle, it is better to eliminate single-use plastics through reduction or reuse.

This story appeared in Chemical & Engineering News , the weekly news magazine of the American Chemical Society.

In collaboration with C&EN .