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hi and welcome to this module my name is
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logan hodgkiss i'm a member of green
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labs austria
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and today in collaboration with the
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newly founded sustainable european
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laboratories i'm going to be talking to
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you about tackling the plastic problem
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in the lab
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so to give you a quick overview about
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what we will be talking about in the
00:00:21
next few minutes
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we'll first start our start off with an
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introduction of why we think this is an
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important topic to discuss
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we'll then move into some of the
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background research about plastic in the
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laboratory followed by implementation of
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recycling plastic in the lab and we'll
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end with some concluding remarks on the
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entire process
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so to get started with the introduction
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i think it's very evident in today's
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world if you look at the different news
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articles
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online or in the newspapers that we have
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a lot of environmental issues that we
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need to address and so this can be
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anything from the rising carbon dioxide
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levels to the wildfires that we see
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around the globe
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and of course the vast amounts of
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plastic that are being deposited not
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only on land but also in the oceans
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and so i think a lot of people would
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agree that these are very pressing
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issues but what is less intuitive is
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what is the environmental impact of the
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laboratories that a lot of us
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consistently work in
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and specifically what we want to talk
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about today is the waste that these
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laboratories produce
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so to give you an idea of what we're
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talking about here we can refer to an
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article that came out in 2015 and this
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article did some background research
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into the plastic generated from a
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specific bioscience department
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and they found that out of 280 bench
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scientists they produced approximately
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267 tons of plastic in 2014
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and this is the equivalent of about 5.7
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million empty two-liter plastic bottles
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now these numbers sound very very high
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but we also have to remember that this
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is one department in one university and
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if we start extrapolating these values
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to multiple departments and multiple
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universities throughout the world we can
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see that these numbers will add up very
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very quickly
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and while these numbers are kind of
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daunting we also want to try to put this
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into something that we can recognize a
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bit more so within green labs austria we
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actually did an internal study that i'll
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talk more about later and based on the
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study we found that the average resource
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usage for microbiology lab per year
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is about 13 times as high for plastic as
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it would be for the average austrian
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household
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and now within this figure we also have
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a comparative analysis for the energy
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but what we're focusing on today is the
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plastic
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and so from this we think that there is
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a problem and this is worth thinking
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about a bit more how we can address this
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problem and so from this point on in the
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presentation i'm going to be talking to
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you about how we decided to address this
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within green labs austria and with our
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members within austria
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so our labs like mini labs around the
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world go through lots of different types
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of plastic and so of course this can be
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anything from pipette tips eppendorf
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tubes falcon tubes even a lot of the
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chemicals that we order come in
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single-use plastic containers
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and so this is uh problematic and we
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wanted to ask what can we do about this
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and so we started researching
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what we can find out about plastic and
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what we quickly realized well hold on
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back up for a second we wanted to ask
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what plastic can be recycled and what
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plastic can be replaced
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and so now when we started looking into
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that type of plastic we've quickly
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realized that not all plastic is created
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equally
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so broadly speaking plastic is divided
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into seven main categories
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and these categories are primarily
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defined about the different chemical
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properties that pertain to these
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different types of plastic
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and if we look at what plastic can
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usually be recycled it's very common
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that we can recycle three main types
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and so those types would include pet
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which is what a lot of our drinking
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water bottles are made out of
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we have high density polyethylene and
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also
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polypropylene and so these are what we
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want to look for if we are using these
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types of plastics then theoretically
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these are plastics that we could recycle
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and so to address that question we
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decided to take a look at our ordering
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list for the year of 2019. so within
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this list we would have all of the items
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that our lab consumed for its regular
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research activities
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and so we were able to get that list and
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try to compile and break it down into
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the different materials that we commonly
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go through
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and so once we did that we found a chart
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that looks like this and so to explain
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this to you on the y-axis we have
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roughly the number of items that we went
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through in the year 2019 based off of
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our ordering form and on the x-axis here
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we have the different types of materials
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so for example
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one of the items that we ordered the
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most was filter tips which were made of
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polypropylene
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and the color code here represents a
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couple different things first of all we
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marked green as plastic materials that
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we order that theoretically can be
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recycled
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we marked items in blue such as paper
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towels and paper tissues as items that
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are not plastic but could still be
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recycled
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and finally in red we have several
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different materials that are just a lot
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more difficult to recycle either because
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of cost or in the case of nitrile gloves
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because of a nitrile component that
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makes them very difficult to reuse
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and so this was very eye opening for us
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and this encouraged us to keep going
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further
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and to think about what would be the
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next steps and while this is all good in
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theory we can see this from the ordering
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list what we really wanted to know is
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how much do we go through in a week and
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so we wanted to go into the lab and
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actually do our own experiment to find
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out
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how much waste we produce
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and so to do this we actually found 12
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volunteers who collected all of their
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waste for an entire week
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and once we had all that waste collected
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we then sorted through it and divided it
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into different categories based on the
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item
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and so when we did that we get
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a waste
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group that looks something like this
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which is very interesting to us for
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several different reasons first of all
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down here in the bottom we can see that
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we go through a massive amount of gloves
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and i think it's a good reminder that we
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should be conscious about how many
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gloves we actually use and while gloves
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are a very important part of research
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activities in a lot of cases maybe we
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don't need to be grabbing a fresh pair
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however in a lot of cases we do need to
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but it's just good to think that through
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another thing that became very obvious
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to us was that we were using some
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materials that were made of plastic that
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could easily be replaced by other items
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so one example of this would be plastic
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plate spreaders that we use to spread
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microbiological cultures onto auger
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plates
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and rather than using
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one time use plastic plate spreaders
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this was something that we could easily
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replace with glass blade plate spreaders
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that can easily be sterilized before
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each use
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another great example that we were going
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through quite a lot of were plastic
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serological pipettes
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and again this was something that we
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could easily easily replace with glass
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pipettes that can be
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washed and autoclaved each time we need
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to use them
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and so this is just a good reminder that
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we're thinking about how we can deal
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with our plastic problem in laboratories
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it's always good to replace items
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whenever possible
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and while that is good we also wanted to
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try to quantify the rest of our waste
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and we decided to do that by separating
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it by weight
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and trying to determine
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what proportion of the total waste by
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weight
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is made up of different materials
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and when we do that we get a pie chart
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that tells us a lot of interesting
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information first of all about 10
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percent of our waste by weight is made
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solely of gloves
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about 16.5 percent of that waste by
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weight comes completely from paper
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and uh the largest portion of our waste
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about
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58 or 24 kilograms comes entirely from
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plastic
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and of that 24 kilograms about 11
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kilograms or 45.8 percent could be
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recycled
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and so again after the order list after
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seeing this data we decided to keep
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following this through
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and to see if it would be worth trying
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to recycle this plastic
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now this data only came from one week of
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collection and we decided in order to be
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more producible that we wanted to repeat
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this process and so within our own lab
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we repeated this process for a total of
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four times and tried to compile all of
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that data
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and so we get two interesting figures
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from this
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we'll start with the figure on the right
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this donut chart
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and this is again showing the amount of
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plastic waste on average that we
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produced in one week and the proportion
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that can be recycled in austria
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and this
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verified what we saw on the previous
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slide that we get approximately 24-26
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kilograms of plastic waste and
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consistently about half of that waste
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can be recycled
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[Music]
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now on the left here this bar chart we
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tried to break down some of that waste
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and get some more information out of it
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and so this very top purple bar here is
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showing the total amount of waste
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in kilograms per researcher per year
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so what this is saying is that on
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average one researcher in our lab
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produces approximately 34 kilograms of
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waste
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now below that purple bar we try to
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break down that waste into the various
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types that would be included there
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so of the total waste polypropylene
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which is a plastic that can be recycled
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makes approximately 10 kilograms
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so each researcher in our group on
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average is producing 10 kilograms of
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plastic per year
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and while that might not sound like a
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lot if we try to put that into something
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that we can imagine a little more
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readily this would be the equivalent of
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approximately 11 000 one milliliter
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pipet tips
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which i think it's very obvious that
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that is a massive amount of pipette tips
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and we try to go through all these
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different categories and break that down
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and so again this really encouraged us
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to keep going with this process however
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we also wanted to expand it beyond our
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initial laboratory and so we were able
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to collaborate with other members of
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green labs austria who also volunteered
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to collect all of their waste and then
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separated it out just like we did
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and again we weighed all of this waste
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we tried to put some numbers on it to
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see if we see a consistent trend across
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these different laboratories
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and
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we do
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so again to walk you through this
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particular graph on the y-axis now we
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have kilograms for researcher per year
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and then on the x-axis we have it broken
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down into the different types of
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material so pp for polypropylene
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nitrile and mixed waste representing
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items that are not plastic we have ps
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for polystyrene and p e for polyethylene
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and each of these
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l1 l2 and l3
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represents a different laboratory that
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participated in this study and each of
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these laboratories repeated this process
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three to four times randomly throughout
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the year
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if we look specifically at polypropylene
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we can see a couple of different colors
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here the dark blue is representing
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commonly used
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polypropylene materials which would be
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pipette tips eps falcon tubes and the
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light blue would just represent other
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items that are made of polypropylene
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that aren't necessarily the commonly
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used items
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and while this is a lot of information
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the big takeaway that we get from
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looking at this data is that
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consistently across different
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laboratories
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one of the biggest contributors to waste
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is polypropylene which again is a
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plastic that can be recycled
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and so after seeing all of this within
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our own lab within other labs that we've
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been working with we decided that it was
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worth our time and effort to develop a
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recycling pipeline that we can implement
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within our own labs and that we could
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supply to other people
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in case they wanted to do the same in
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their own labs
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so this brings me to the third part of
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this presentation
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which is discussing the implementation
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of a plastic recycling pipeline
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so to do this we tried to break it down
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into three broad steps for plastic
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recycling
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step one would be the separation of
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plastic materials very often when you're
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recycling plastic it's very important
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that you can separate it in a way that
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makes it readily recyclable
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so in lab materials we have two broad
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types of plastic we have most of it is
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being made of either polyethylene or
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polypropylene
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so in polyethylene we have things like
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needle caps falcon tube lids and
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polypropylene we have the eppendorf
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tubes pipette tips the bodies of falcon
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tubes
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etc
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and you'll see from this figure that we
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also need to separate it into autoclaved
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and non-autoclaved plastic
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in almost every biological laboratory if
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any waste has been in contact with
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biological material it will need to be
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autoclaved which is why we need to
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separate it out
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now a lot of people point out that
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autoclaving is an energy-intensive
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process
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and they are absolutely correct
00:13:08
however we like to remind people that
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regardless of whether or not you are
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recycling this plastic it will need to
00:13:14
be autoclaved and so we're not
00:13:15
recommending to add additional
00:13:17
autoclaving steps we're just suggesting
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that the plastic be separated ahead of
00:13:21
time and then autoclaved
00:13:25
other things to consider other than
00:13:27
the autoclaving and the separation of
00:13:29
plastic
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is that of course if any of these
00:13:32
plastic materials have been in contact
00:13:34
with hazardous biological material or
00:13:36
toxic materials it simply cannot be
00:13:38
recycled
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and this is not something that should be
00:13:41
new for any laboratory every laboratory
00:13:44
has protocols in place on how to deal
00:13:46
with any hazardous or toxic materials
00:13:48
and so that should always take priority
00:13:50
and none of those materials should go
00:13:51
into the plastic recycling pipeline and
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i think that's a very important point
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to remind people
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but in summary for the first step it's
00:14:00
important to separate the plastic and
00:14:01
autoclave it if you need to if it has
00:14:03
been in contact with live cultures
00:14:07
step two after knowing how to separate
00:14:09
the plastic would be collecting the
00:14:11
plastic
00:14:13
the important thing we like to tell
00:14:15
people is that communication is key and
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the idea here is to make sorting as easy
00:14:19
and sensible as possible for your fellow
00:14:21
lab members
00:14:23
so for our particular group we tried to
00:14:25
come up with some informative labels
00:14:27
that would demonstrate what items need
00:14:29
to be recycled where
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and in our case this looked something
00:14:33
like these where we have high density
00:14:35
polyethylene over here we're trying to
00:14:37
clearly show what can and what cannot go
00:14:39
into this recycling container
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and for polypropylene we did the same
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thing
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now not every lab is going to use the
00:14:48
same visuals and this is does not have
00:14:50
to be a one-size-fits-all approach a
00:14:52
great example of this from another one
00:14:54
of our member labs who started this
00:14:56
process
00:14:58
is here where they took our design and
00:15:01
the basic concept of our design but they
00:15:02
redid it in order to better communicate
00:15:04
with their own lab members because they
00:15:06
found that this worked better for them
00:15:09
and so it does not matter how you
00:15:10
communicate this whether it's visually
00:15:12
or with words as long as it's clearly
00:15:14
communicated for the people that you are
00:15:16
working with
00:15:18
once you have come up with a good way to
00:15:20
communicate this we then recommend
00:15:22
putting those labels onto individual
00:15:24
smaller containers and supplying those
00:15:25
containers directly on the lab bench of
00:15:28
the people working in the lab
00:15:30
by doing this it makes it very easy for
00:15:31
researchers to recycle pipette tips
00:15:34
eppendorf tubes etc
00:15:36
as they are going about their uh day in
00:15:39
the lab
00:15:41
at another location in the lab in a
00:15:43
spare corner that you may have we then
00:15:45
suggest to put larger containers where
00:15:47
you can then take the smaller containers
00:15:49
when they're full put them into or dump
00:15:51
them empty them into the respective
00:15:53
larger containers which then already has
00:15:55
the plastic that can be sent for
00:15:56
recycling or autoclaved and then sent
00:15:59
for recycling
00:16:00
and so this is a great way that has
00:16:02
worked very well for us in order to
00:16:04
accomplish this
00:16:07
the final step and arguably the most
00:16:09
important is the recycling of the
00:16:11
plastic
00:16:13
now not all municipalities have the
00:16:15
option of recycling plastic and
00:16:16
depending on what city you live in there
00:16:18
may or may not be different options on
00:16:21
how to do this
00:16:22
but this was a very important concept
00:16:24
for us because we wanted to know that if
00:16:26
we collect our plastic is there anyone
00:16:28
who will take it and importantly we
00:16:30
wanted to know what happens to it
00:16:33
unfortunately a lot of times when
00:16:36
plastic or trash is
00:16:38
collected it's either incinerated or
00:16:40
sent to another country to be someone
00:16:42
else's problem
00:16:43
we wanted to make sure that that was not
00:16:44
happening with our plastic we wanted it
00:16:46
to be
00:16:48
recycled so unfortunately sometimes
00:16:51
that's not always straightforward so in
00:16:53
a lot of municipalities they may have
00:16:55
plastic recycling containers but if you
00:16:57
try to follow where that plastic goes
00:16:59
it's typically sent to another waste
00:17:00
company that then has many
00:17:02
subcontractors that will take that
00:17:03
plastic and if you try to follow this
00:17:05
trail it becomes often very ambiguous
00:17:09
and people either don't know what
00:17:10
happens to the plastic that they are
00:17:11
using or they simply don't want to
00:17:14
answer your questions
00:17:16
and while this is unfortunate there are
00:17:18
ways around this and uh we highly
00:17:20
recommend that you look for
00:17:22
organizations uh businesses or companies
00:17:25
within your local area that you can
00:17:27
collaborate with that would take your
00:17:28
plastic
00:17:30
so an example for us in vienna we were
00:17:32
able to team up with an organization
00:17:34
known as stopsal salmon for iron
00:17:36
gutensvek
00:17:37
which is a group that collects plastic
00:17:39
bottle caps and recycles them while
00:17:41
donating the proceeds to sick children
00:17:43
in austria
00:17:45
and we were able to contact them and ask
00:17:46
them if they would be willing to also
00:17:48
accept the plastic that we collect from
00:17:50
our laboratories
00:17:52
and they not only agreed but they also
00:17:54
put us in contact with the facility
00:17:56
where they recycle their plastic
00:17:58
and we were able to send two of our
00:17:59
members there
00:18:00
and confirm that all the plastic that we
00:18:02
recycle does get broken down into small
00:18:05
granules and then reuse to make new
00:18:07
plastic materials and this is a company
00:18:09
known as pre-zero which i believe also
00:18:11
exists at least in germany
00:18:15
and this was very important for us this
00:18:16
really closed the loop for recycling and
00:18:18
we were able to confirm
00:18:20
that everything we're doing would uh
00:18:22
lead to the recycling of plastic
00:18:26
and so this can be a challenging part
00:18:28
but
00:18:29
with a little effort i think that almost
00:18:30
any larger city within europe it should
00:18:33
be possible to find at least one
00:18:35
organization or
00:18:37
uh business that you would be able to
00:18:39
work with
00:18:42
so to give a broad overview of this
00:18:43
entire process we of course recommend
00:18:45
that you replace any unnecessary plastic
00:18:47
consumables and then you break this down
00:18:50
into three steps first identifying and
00:18:52
separating the plastic secondly
00:18:53
collecting the plastic and finally
00:18:55
making sure it gets recycled responsibly
00:19:00
so to wrap up this entire presentation
00:19:02
and give some concluding remarks i again
00:19:04
want to come back to the important point
00:19:06
that communication is key
00:19:09
if you're thinking of trying this out in
00:19:10
your laboratory what we would recommend
00:19:12
doing is working with a smaller group
00:19:14
first if you can find two or three
00:19:16
people who are willing to give this a
00:19:17
try
00:19:18
and see how it goes they will be able to
00:19:20
give some feedback on what works and
00:19:22
what doesn't and i think that's an
00:19:24
important step before trying to roll it
00:19:26
out to a much larger lab group that's
00:19:28
what we tried and it worked very well to
00:19:30
work out some of the kinks
00:19:32
and of course it's always good to be
00:19:33
adaptable if you identify any areas
00:19:36
where you can completely remove plastic
00:19:39
that's always the primary goal
00:19:43
and while this can be a very daunting
00:19:45
process we also try to give as many
00:19:47
resources as possible
00:19:49
for labs that want to start doing this
00:19:51
so on our website
00:19:52
www.greenlabsaustria.et
00:19:56
we have a resources tab at the top of
00:19:57
our page and under those resources we
00:19:59
have an entire section devoted just to
00:20:02
plastic recycling
00:20:04
so we try to supply all the information
00:20:06
that we have found as we did this
00:20:07
process
00:20:09
and importantly we also have a section
00:20:11
for frequently asked questions
00:20:14
and so these are questions that we often
00:20:15
get from our own members and we have
00:20:17
tried to compile all of those and put
00:20:19
those on the website to make it
00:20:20
available for anyone who wants to check
00:20:22
it out
00:20:29
with that
00:20:30
that is a quick overview of our plastic
00:20:32
recycling pipeline of course if you have
00:20:33
any questions at all you can always
00:20:35
email us at info greenlabsaustria.et
00:20:39
we'll do our best to answer any of your
00:20:40
questions
00:20:41
and i have to say a big thank you to all
00:20:43
of the core members of green labs
00:20:45
austria who really made this possible it
00:20:47
was a lot of work and research to bring
00:20:49
all of this together and there's no way
00:20:50
any one of us who could have done it on
00:20:53
our own
00:20:54
we'd also like to thank our
00:20:56
group leaders for being so supportive of
00:20:58
this process and allowing us to
00:21:00
implement this within our own labs
00:21:03
um of course you can always follow us on
00:21:04
twitter
00:21:05
for greenlabs austria the sales network
00:21:07
also has a twitter account now and so
00:21:10
this is a great way that we use to
00:21:12
communicate a lot of new information
00:21:13
that we get
00:21:14
so we
00:21:15
love to have you follow us and
00:21:16
communicate that way as well
00:21:20
and uh with that again thank you and uh
00:21:22
we look forward to hearing from you if
00:21:23
you have any questions
