GreenLabs Recycling, a Concord, Mass.-based lab science plastics recycling startup, is expanding its business nationally through a partnership with French environmental services company Veolia.
GreenLabs is collecting waste from Veolia customers to make waste storage bins at its injection molding site in Leominster, Mass.
The recycled-content hazardous waste transfer bins are each uniquely colored depending on the colors in the batches of granulated content that goes into GreenLab's injection molds, Sam White, CEO of GreenLabs Recycling told Plastics News in an interview.
The startup collects pipette tip boxes, wafers and lids as well as conical tube racks from universities and biotech companies. It also makes consumer products such as mop buckets, hangers and planters from the recycled content.
"Scientists love being able to see what their plastic is being turned into," White said. "Most of our business is generated from scientists who are just so fed up with unnecessarily throwing out all of this plastic that ends up in landfill. … We're trying to create more transparency around what happens to [recycled] plastic.
"It's as much of a sustainability issue as it is a human resources issue," he said. "If lab managers can enable an easy way for their scientists to take climate action, it boosts morale."
GreenLabs' pilot program with Veolia helped to "iron out the process," White said, now allowing the recycler to "scale the number of customers that we can acquire."
GreenLab's partner Veolia ships the lab plastics meant for recycling to a non-hazardous consolidation facility near Boston. The consolidated plastics are then sent back to GreenLabs, "to begin the circular recycling solution," Molly Cahill, strategy and growth manager for Veolia North America's environmental solutions and services business, told Plastics News in an email.
"Veolia is deeply connected to the biotech industry in Greater Boston, both as a corporate sponsor for Greentown Labs in Boston and as a longtime partner with MassBio, the leading biotech association in Massachusetts and one of the largest and most influential biotech networks in the country," Cahill said. "Veolia has resources and expertise to support innovative startups like GreenLabs, which is consistent with our commitment to creating a strong innovation ecosystem of partnerships with universities, accelerators and startups, especially in innovative hubs like Boston."
Along with its partnership with Veolia, GreenLabs recently moved into a 6,000-square-foot warehouse in Littleton, Mass., expanding from its original 800-square-foot footprint, "to accommodate the growth that we've had in the Boston biotech hub," White added.
Co-founders Brenda and David Waterman were graduate students at Brandeis pursing PhDs in biology when they were inspired to start GreenLabs, which launched in 2018.
"They were horrified about the amount of plastic that they were putting in in landfill," White said.
"I hope decision makers at large biotech [companies] get … the urgency," he said. "Health care puts out more emissions than airlines and it's just not talked about enough."
Although recycling is a Scope 3 emissions target, "and a lot of the budgets from large biotech [companies] are restricted to scope-one emissions," White said, "it is the cheapest, most visible thing you can do, not just for your shareholders, but for your employees to make an impact [on the environment]."