I'd like to compliment you. That is a very nice lab. Any oil spill that can be stopped (such as the gulf oil spills), should be. From working in the polymer medical/pharmaceutical industry, my personal opinion is that the amount of waste plastic plastic/rubber/latex listed is probably low. But take a look at the photo provided. The amount of various polymers is that room is large(plastic bags, transparent plastic used throughout, plastic vacuum hoses, maybe plastic coated reagent bottles). Not that your lab is unusual. The lab I worked in was very similar. And Covid has only made the situation worse. So the work being discussed. How does it solve the problem? Or does it just identify it?

Just to make sure you understand. i think the amount of waste is much higher than what is listed. Proving it? That will be very difficult.

In class today we watched a video called "Microplastic Ingestion By Humans and Fish". They told us about how fish have a lot of microplastics inside their stomachs mostly catfishes and many other "deep water" fishes that are in the oceans/lakes/rivers. People throw their trash into these waters and the fish eat it thinking that its food and eventually start getting sick because of all the microplastics that's in their stomachs.