SAN DIEGO — A recycling program is saving personal protective equipment from laboratories across the U.S. and keeping it out of landfills.

Just as necessary as his lab coat, Paul Brewer says nitrile gloves help protect him and his work as a molecular biologist.

What You Need To Know

  • The RightCycle program keeps hard-to-recycle single-use personal protective equipment out of the landfill

  • It takes things like gloves, masks, and eyewear and transforms them into new consumer goods, like pellets, flower pots, trellises and plastic furniture

  • AnaptysBio says they have kept more than 400 pounds of lab glove waste out of San Diego’s landfills every year

  • They says since joining the program in 2019, they have diverted a ton of gloves from San Diego landfills

"We wear gloves to protect ourselves from chemicals or other hazards," Brewer said. "And then it's also really important for protecting the quality of our samples and our research."

Brewer works at AnaptysBio, a biotech company in San Diego. 

He said their laboratory's 40+ employees can use as many as 200 pairs of gloves daily. 

To keep that waste out of landfills, they started participating in the RightCycle program, which takes hard-to-recycle single-use personal protective equipment, like gloves, masks, and eyewear and transforms it into new consumer goods, like pellets, flower pots, trellises, and plastic furniture.

Brewer said they have kept more than 400 pounds of lab glove waste out of San Diego's landfills yearly.

"I think it was just a great way to take something that otherwise can't be reused or recycled and repurpose it, keep it out of the landfill," he said.

Monique da Silva is an executive at AnaptysBio. 

She said joining RightCycle was natural for them because they focus on minimizing their environmental impact while also forging ahead with their work.

"We all create different kinds of waste," da Silva said. "But this was a way that we could make a difference in the environment and come up with a relatively straight-forward way to collect these gloves and have them turned into something useable that can add value and hopefully some beauty in a different context."

She said that since joining the program in 2019, they have diverted a ton of gloves from San Diego landfills. 

Both Brewer and da Silva hope that other biotech companies in San Diego and beyond will consider this program the new way to move forward.

"And these are things that we can do as an organization and I think we can do as an industry that really over time makes a huge difference," da Silva said. 

Brewer said most of its employees are part of a green team that brainstorms ways to operate more environmentally friendly, like the RightCycle program.

"I love nature, I'm an environmentalist, I really love wilderness; and plastic is a big problem," he said. "It's showing up everywhere in nature and so it's great to have a program where we can divert some of the plastic waste and have it reused into cool products."

San Diego currently has 16 companies participating in the RightCycle program, and the company hopes to increase that number over the next year.