Scottish Water has become the first utility in the world to adopt an innovative technology aimed at substantially reducing plastic laboratory waste and making the handling process more efficient, lower carbon and easier to track.
Scottish Water and Envetec Sustainable Technologies Limited (Envetec), a clean technology company focused on the treatment and recovery of laboratory plastic waste, have announced the utility has adopted Envetec’s GENERATIONS® technology to improve how high-volume laboratory plastics are handled after use.
While Scottish Water already recycled non-contaminated sample bottles, the new technology provides a more efficient route for processing them and, crucially, enables single-use plastics that may be contaminated with microbiological waste to be disinfected, shredded and prepared for recycling for the first time.
Scottish Water completes around three million analytical tests each year across its laboratories in Edinburgh, Inverness and other locations throughout Scotland to protect public health, maintain water quality and safeguard the environment.
To ensure compliance with stringent regulatory standards, Scottish Water must use large quantities of single-use plastics in its laboratories, including sample bottles, petri dishes and pipette tips, to support safe, sterile and accurate testing, making its Scientific Services team the largest producer of plastic waste across the company.
Elise Cartmel, General Manager for Net Zero at Scottish Water, said: “We carry out millions of tests in our labs every year to protect public health and the environment, and that relies on single-use plastics. “We’re really pleased to be working with Envetec to lead the way with this innovative technology. It is allowing us to handle these waste streams in a more environmentally friendly way and reducing what goes to landfill or incineration, while maintaining the high standards our customers expect.”
Since January, Scottish Water’s Scientific Services team has processed approximately 72,000 sample bottles through the new Envetec technology, reducing the time staff spend manually handling bottles and creating a more streamlined, traceable process for one of its highest-volume laboratory plastic streams.
The team is now extending the technology to microbiological plastic waste that has traditionally required autoclaving – a sterilisation process used in labs and healthcare settings to make equipment or samples completely free of micro-organisms – before being sent to landfill or for incineration because it could not previously be recycled.
By enabling these previously unrecyclable plastics to be treated for recycling, the new process supports a more circular approach while helping reduce energy demand, water use and carbon associated with traditional treatment processes.
GENERATIONS uses simultaneous chemical disinfection and shredding to treat laboratory plastic waste on site, including non-hazardous sample bottles and microbiological plastic waste such as petri dishes and pipette tips. The process produces treated material suitable for recycling, helping Scottish Water bring previously non-recyclable contaminated plastics into a recycling pathway while reducing reliance on autoclaving, landfill and incineration for selected waste streams.
Here’s Scottish Water film, showing how the new process works – Envetec to Reduce Plastic Waste in Labs – Scottish Water
