Purdue University part of glove-recycling initiative

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. (AP) - Laboratories at Purdue University have recycled more than 5,000 pounds of lab gloves since fall 2014 as part of an international program.

RightCycle, in which 45 schools across the U.S. and Canada participate in, has diverted more than 350 metric tons of waste from landfills, the Lafayette Journal and Courier (http://on.jconline.com/2gpMZjw ) reported.

Purdue officials said the school uses about 360,000 disposable gloves each year, which equates to about 3.5 tons of discarded gloves.

The first year the program was implemented, the university's labs recycled more than 2,000 pounds of gloves - more than any other university taking part in the initiative.

"We beat out other universities doing it across their whole campuses," Suzy Gustafson, manager for Purdue's Chemistry Procurement Center.

The program is run through Kimberly-Clark Professional, a manufacturer of paper and cleaning solutions for industry and consumers, and also recycles masks, garments and other apparel from universities and pharmaceutical companies.

According to Randy Kates, senior director of global scientific business at Kimberly-Clark, gloves comprise about 20 percent of some institutions' total waste streams.

"It's a real blind spot, as you can imagine, for a lot of these campuses," he said.

Most of the recyclable gloves come from undergraduate labs in the Brown chemistry building because those gloves don't have hazardous material on them, she said. About 21 undergraduate chemistry labs have boxes to recycle gloves. Labs in the Center for Drug Discovery Building also take part in the program.

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Information from: Journal and Courier, http://www.jconline.com