Workshop Speaker 2
Title: Greener Research for A More Sustainable Future
By Associate Professor Dr Lim Teck Hock
Faculty of Applied Sciences, Tunku Abdul Rahman University of Management and Technology
limth@tarc.edu.my
Workshop Speaker 2
Title: Greener Research for A More Sustainable Future
By Associate Professor Dr Lim Teck Hock
Faculty of Applied Sciences, Tunku Abdul Rahman University of Management and Technology
limth@tarc.edu.my
Synopsis
The Covid-19 pandemic has brought to the world’s attention the environmental impact of daily anthropogenic activities. Habitants of big cities have witnessed how their air and rivers became cleaner after a period of lock-downs. With the world springs back gradually to the “new normal”, alarming statistics published by the World Economic Forum 2022 estimated that 400 million tons of plastic waste were generated worldwide yearly. Amongst these, only 9 % is being recycled. [1,2] One significant source of plastic wastes actually comes from research activities across the globe with an estimated 5.5-million tons plastic waste being generated yearly in laboratories. Surprisingly, this has largely gone unnoticed. [3] It is therefore important to raise awareness in research communities and amongst scientists to curb their love of plastics especially single use plastics of which 98 % was made from fossil fuels. Laboratories should be encouraged to go green and strike a good balance between quality research and environmental sustainability. Ways forward to achieve such balance would be discussed with examples.
References
[1]. Faith Wakefield, “Top 25 recycling facts and statistics for 2022”
(https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/06/recycling-global-statistics-facts-plastic-paper/)
[2].https://www.oecd.org/environment/plastic-pollution-is-growing-relentlessly-as-waste-management-and-recycling-fall-short.htm
[3]. Alice Bell “Can Laboratories curb their addition to plastic”. The Guardian 10 Nov 2019.