The new year is a great time to consider your company’s environmental impact and to develop or enhance its sustainability efforts. As we discussed in our April 2024 Earth Day blog, Safety Partners is constantly striving to provide innovative solutions that enhance laboratory safety while also promoting sustainable practices.
To kick off 2025, we will be cohosting a free webinar with Polycarbin on The Role of Single-Use Plastics in Life Science Innovation. To learn more about sustainability options for your organization and to gain insights into the latest innovations and strategies in sustainable lab practices, please join us on January 14 (12–1 p.m. EST) for this engaging panel discussion. Register today!
We are also starting off the new year with the January 15 release of the ninth edition of Safety Partners’ yearly publication Incidents, Accidents, and Near Misses in Laboratory Research. This edition features a new section on the Sustainability of Safety. It includes several interviews with our Sustainability Team that show that safety and sustainability go hand in hand. An excerpt from one of these interviews is included below.
Can Lab Gloves be Recycled?
“One common misconception about gloves is that they cannot be recycled because they are contaminated with chemical and/or infectious materials. While this is true to some extent, contaminated and uncontaminated gloves can still be separated, allowing uncontaminated gloves to be collected for recycling. There are several vendors that offer uncontaminated glove recycling services and use the recycled material to make new products.
On the other hand, gloves contaminated with chemicals or infectious materials cannot be recycled. They must be collected in their appropriate hazardous and/or regulated medical waste containers for proper disposal by an approved waste vendor. The result of segregating contaminated from uncontaminated gloves for recycling helps reduce the amount of lab waste consumption and cost and, in turn, helps divert much of the waste from being sent for incineration and/or landfill.”
Other interviews featured in this segment of Incidents, Accidents, and Near Misses in Laboratory Research provide additional perspectives on safe and sustainable practices to help decrease energy consumption, the production of lab waste, and water usage.
Wishing you a safe and sustainable 2025 new year from all of us at Safety Partners!
This Blog was written by Beth Graham, Safety Partners’ Director of Quality, Research, and Training with contributions from the Sustainability Team.
