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.

They are holding an event in the University Centre Courtyard on April 5 and 6, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., encouraging anyone on campus with unwanted lab coats to drop them off for donation. A dropoff box will also be available in front of the OVC cafeteria from April 4 to 6. 

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.