Reducing plastic waste in the lab
It’s time to confront the amount of plastic that’s thrown away by scientists each year
Being part of the scientific community means surrounding yourself with different scientists from all over the world for a large part of your life. This might lead to the impression that there are multitudes of us. Yet, according to Unesco, only 0.1% of people are scientists.
However, there is one area where we make a much bigger impression on the world than our numbers would suggest: plastic waste. A study from the University of Exeter, UK, has estimated that life scientists alone create approximately 5.5 million tons of plastic waste annually, which accounts for approximately 2% of the plastic waste produced worldwide. How much waste other scientific fields add on top of this does not appear to be known. Through our research, we scientists are unintentionally contributing to the detriment of the world and the very lives we are attempting to improve.
To raise awareness of this issue, members of the eLife ambassador programme organised a global Lab Waste Day on Twitter on 17 September 2019.