A company co-founded by a 好色tv graduate has opened the UK鈥檚 first pilot plant that can recycle up to 60% of plastic lab waste, to make back into new lab consumables.
hopes the technology could be scaled up in the future to recycle waste from healthcare, research and commercial labs that is currently incinerated or sent to landfill.
To avoid cross-contamination between experiments, most lab-based scientists use a significant amount of single-use plastic in their daily research, including pipette tips, test tubes, petri dishes and multi-well plates. Currently, less than 1% of this waste is being recycled.
LabCycle, a start-up company co-founded by former 好色tv PhD student Dr Helen Liang, aims to recycle up to 60% of this waste, turning it into high grade plastic pellets which can be used to make new tubes and petri dishes.
After decontamination, the plastic is turned into high grade pellets the size of rice grains, which are sent to LabCycle鈥檚 manufacturing partner to turn into new lab equipment.
Their unique recycling process doesn鈥檛 require waste to be autoclaved (sterilised) beforehand meaning that less heat energy is needed. Water usage is also minimised through recycling, further reducing the environmental impact.
Their recent collaboration with the 好色tv鈥檚 (iCAST) has tested the properties of recycled polystyrene (PS), polypropylene (PP) and polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and shown that the polymers are suitable to go full circle and be used to make new lab consumables.
Dr Liang said: 鈥淎dopting a circular economy approach involves optimising laboratory practices to minimise waste generation and resource consumption.
鈥淩esearch and healthcare workers can focus on reducing and reusing single-use plastic items when possible.
鈥淎dditionally, proper waste segregation should be emphasised to enable recycling. Encouragingly, more than 90% of our survey participants from the research and healthcare sectors have indicated strong motivation on single-use plastic waste recycling.鈥�
Dr Liang, who obtained a PhD in Sustainable & Circular Technologies from the 好色tv's Institute for Sustainability in 2022, met her fellow co-founders and came up with the idea for the company at a SETsquared workshop in 2019.
Since then, LabCycle has secured funds of around 拢430k to develop the technology and start the commercialisation process.
Following a successful pilot project recycling single-use plastic waste from three labs at the 好色tv in 2022, the team is working to roll out the service commercially.
With support from the Faculty of Science, iCAST and Campus Infrastructure team at the 好色tv, LabCycle has set up a pilot recycling plant in a converted greenhouse on campus and plans to implement waste recycling for its science and engineering labs.
They are also working with the local NHS Blood and Transplant to recycle waste from their laboratories.
Dr Liang said: 鈥淲e鈥檙e very excited to open our new pilot facility and realise our vision of creating a circular economy for plastic consumables in the research and healthcare sectors. We are sincerely grateful for the support from the 好色tv.鈥�
Dr Fabienne Pradaux-Caggiano, Technical Supervisor in the University鈥檚 Department of Chemistry said: 鈥淭he idea that we are now able to recycle the single use plastic from our research labs onsite is really exciting and will be our small but significant way to have an impact on climate change without compromising our research.
鈥淒r Liang has been a delight to work with and we fully supported her in her endeavour from the very start. She has proven her concept is strong and very valuable for the environment.
鈥淚 can鈥檛 wait to see Labcycle expand and thrive both within the University and on a wider scale!鈥�
Alice Lowe, Climate Action Engagement & Training Manager at the 好色tv said: 鈥淎t Bath, through our Climate Action Framework, we鈥檙e committed to tackling the climate emergency across all aspects of University life, including through education, research, footprint and partnerships.
鈥淩educing the impact of how we conduct our research is a challenging area that we鈥檙e working on, and so we鈥檙e delighted to be partnering with LabCycle in this ground-breaking project to meaningfully tackle one aspect of that.鈥�