The increased urgency around plastic use awareness is nothing novel, and yet the crisis continues to loom large. According to the World Wildlife Fund report, an estimated 10 million metric tons of plastic waste enter the ocean each year, harming marine life and ecosystems. As we know, plastic waste can take hundreds of years to decompose, contributing to alarming long-term environmental damage.
Concurrently, laboratory plastic consumption has reached concerning levels, with 5 million tons generated annually worldwide (or 67 cruise liners worth, as visualized by the Nature Report in 2015). While the immediate impact may be evident at the bench level, comprehending the broader environmental consequences requires awareness and education.
A simple yet eye-opening experiment can effectively illustrate the issue: instead of observing daily disposals, try saving your lab's plastic waste for a week. The accumulated volume in just a few days will be a powerful wake-up call, a stark reminder of our collective contribution. By transforming the invisible into a visible tangible mass, we gain a deeper understanding of our plight and the urgency toward finding ecological solutions.
Now that we have confirmed the severity of the problem, we need to understand exactly what gets tossed. Different research areas will have distinct plastic waste profiles. For instance, cell culture labs will have stacks of tissue culture dishes and flasks, while genomics laboratories might pile on significant amounts of PCR tubes and plates.