Sustainability in marine ecology labs - is bioplastic an alternative?
Detta är ett förslag på examensarbete för kandidat- eller masternivå vid Institutionen för marina vetenskaper. Examensarbeten vid Institutionen för marina vetenskaper görs självständigt och bedöms individuellt.
Subject: Marine Biology
Level: Bachelor Level
Where: Botan, Göteborg
Project background
In view of environmental stability now and in the future, we have the responsibility to conserve natural resources and protect ecosystems to support health and wellbeing. In marine (micro) biology labs, we traditionally rely on loads of single-use plastics that ensure sterility, good and replicated growth conditions and clean un-contaminated sampling campaigns.
However, these single use plastics and consumables using fossil fuels are not good for our carbon footprint. With this project, we want to test if we can use bioplastics as an alternative for consumables in our microbiology labs.
Project description
You will test if phytoplankton and bacteria grow and behave equally well in growth chambers out of bioplastics compared to traditional plastics.
We will test if plastics and bioplastics are leaching chemical compounds and whether we can easily substitute consumables to more sustainable alternatives. A carbon footprint and costs analyses will complement the project to provide guidelines for marine microbial labs.
Contact
Olga Kourtchenko, Department of Marine Sciences
Email: olga.kourtchenko@marine.gu.se
Carina Bunse, Department of Marine Sciences
Email: carina.bunse@gu.se