A staggering 5.5 million tons of single-use plastics are generated each year by science labs, negating 83% of the world’s recycled plastics. A team at Illinois was recently awarded a $81,865 grant to reduce dependency on single-use plastics by developing protocols for plastics reuse.

The Labor, Health, Equity, Action Project (LHEAP) is a team of interdisciplinary researchers from across University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, coalescing in the Infection Genomics for One Health theme at the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology. Its core members include Professors Jessica Brinkworth, Korinta Maldonado, Ellen Moodie, from the Department Anthropology and Rachel Whitaker, from the Department of Microbiology, as well as Gilberto Rosas, in the Departments of Anthropology and Latina/o Studies.