E-waste plastics get second life in laboratory

The team at the Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore)–CEA Alliance for Research in Circular Economy (SCARCE) only subjected plastic e-waste to sterilisation before being trialled in lab experiments.

The team found that over 95 per cent of the human stem cells seeded on plastics scavenged from discarded computer components remained healthy after a week, which is comparable to cells grown on conventional cell culture plates.

These findings, described online in Science of the Total Environment, indicate a potential new sustainable use for e-waste plastics, which account for about 20 per cent of the 50 million tonnes of e-waste produced globally. On the laboratory side, around 5.5 million tonnes of plastic waste, including cell culture dishes, is generated worldwide in a year.

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Team leader Assistant Professor Dalton Tay of the NTU School of Materials Science and Engineering and School of Biological Sciences, said: “E-waste plastics contain hazardous components which may get released into the environment if not disposed of properly. Interestingly, we found through our studies that certain e-waste plastics could successfully maintain cell growth, making them potential alternatives to the cell culture plastics used in labs today.”