New U of G Student Club Giving New Life to Old Lab Coats
A new University of Guelph student club is determined to bring sustainability to the laboratory and has set its sights on giving old lab coats a new life.
Green Labs Guelph, started by five U of G students, is encouraging students who no longer want lab coats that they used for chemistry classes to donate them for re-use.
Students who donate their coats will be entered to win one of 40 gift cards worth $20 to a business of their choice.
With help from staff in the Chemistry stockroom, the coats will be laundered, stored through the summer and re-sold to new students come September.
“It’s a great way to make sure that unwanted coats that would otherwise be discarded don’t end up in landfill but can find a new life with students who need them,” said Youstina Makhlouf, in photo at right, a first-year student veterinarian in the Ontario Veterinary College who helped found Green Labs Guelph.
Makhlouf came up with the lab-coat recycling idea while taking a sustainability course in her third year.
“That course really informed how I see the world,” said Makhlouf. “Brandon Raco, the sustainability manager at the Sustainability Office, did a presentation and talked about how campuses act like a living experiment for sustainability issues.”
Read the entire story on the University of Guelph website.
