What Really Drives Scientists to Cut Lab Plastic Waste? New Study Reveals Surprising Answer

Laboratories are among the most plastic-intensive workplaces on the planet. Pipette tips, culture plates, centrifuge tubes, petri dishes and reagent bottles are used once and thrown away by the millions every day, because sterility and reproducibility demand it. While campaigns against single-use plastics have reshaped supermarkets, cafes and households, the research bench has remained largely untouched, protected by the legitimate needs of scientific rigour. A new study from Malaysia now offers one of the clearest psychological portraits yet of why laboratory users do, or do not, manage their plastic waste sustainably, and its findings challenge some long-held assumptions about how to change behaviour in scientific workplaces.

The research, published in the journal Discover Sustainability, was conducted by Yi Huan Tan, Lai Ti Gew, Raja Affendi Raja Ali and Pei Boon Ooi, drawing on teams from Sunway University’s Jeffrey Cheah Sunway Medical School and School of Psychology, together with the Gut Research Group at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. The team set out to identify the determinants of sustainable single-use plastic waste management behaviour among active laboratory users in Malaysia. Rather than simply cataloguing what people throw away, the researchers wanted to understand the mental machinery behind the decision: the attitudes, social pressures, sense of control and environmental awareness that combine to shape whether a scientist sorts, reuses or properly disposes of plastic consumables.

To do this, the study leaned on one of the most widely used frameworks in behavioural science: the Theory of Planned Behaviour, or TPB. Developed originally to explain how human actions flow from intention, the theory proposes that the single best predictor of a behaviour is the intention to perform it, and that intention itself is driven by three factors. The first is attitude, meaning the individual’s evaluation of the behaviour as beneficial or harmful. The second is subjective norms, the perceived social pressure from colleagues, supervisors and peers to behave in a certain way. The third is perceived behavioural control, the person’s belief that they are actually capable of carrying out the behaviour given the resources, opportunities and obstacles they face.

The Malaysian team extended this classic model by adding a fourth psychological ingredient: environmental awareness, the depth of a person’s understanding of environmental problems and the consequences of their own actions. They also included a practical control variable, namely whether a sustainable waste management protocol was present in the respondent’s workplace, to test whether formal institutional rules shape outcomes independently of psychology. This combination allowed the researchers to weigh the relative power of internal beliefs against external structures, a question that matters enormously for anyone designing sustainability policies for research institutions.

Data came from a cross-sectional survey of 245 active laboratory users, recruited through an online questionnaire. The sample captured people who work at the bench day to day and therefore generate and handle laboratory plastic waste directly. The researchers then analysed the responses using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling, a statistical technique known as PLS-SEM that is well suited to testing complex networks of relationships between psychological constructs. Rather than examining each factor in isolation, PLS-SEM allows scientists to build a model in which attitudes, norms, control beliefs and awareness feed into intention, and intention and control in turn feed into actual reported behaviour, with the strength of each pathway estimated simultaneously.

The results were striking in several respects. Attitude, perceived behavioural control and environmental awareness all significantly predicted behavioural intention, confirming that laboratory users who view sustainable plastic management as worthwhile, who feel capable of doing it, and who understand the environmental stakes are more likely to intend to act. But the single strongest predictor was perceived behavioural control. In other words, what mattered most was not whether scientists cared, and not even whether they felt social pressure from those around them, but whether they believed they had the practical ability, time, facilities and institutional support to manage their plastic waste sustainably.

Just as telling was what failed to predict intention. Subjective norms, the social pressure component of the Theory of Planned Behaviour, showed no significant relationship with behavioural intention in this sample. This is a genuinely counterintuitive result, because in many environmental behaviour studies the expectations of peers and colleagues are a powerful lever. The finding suggests that in laboratory settings, simply encouraging a culture of sustainability, or relying on colleagues to nudge one another, may not be enough on its own. Scientists, the study implies, may respond less to what everyone around them says and more to what the workplace actually enables them to do.

The model’s downstream pathways reinforced this control-centred picture. Both behavioural intention and perceived behavioural control positively predicted sustainable waste management behaviours, meaning that good intentions do translate into action, but only when people also feel empowered to act. The practical implication is hard to overstate: institutions that want greener laboratories should focus less on persuasion and more on infrastructure. Accessible recycling streams, clear protocols, adequate bins, training and time built into workflows may accomplish what awareness campaigns alone cannot, because they directly strengthen the sense of control that the data identify as the dominant driver.

The presence of a sustainable waste management protocol as a control variable adds an organisational dimension to the findings. Formal protocols represent the institutional scaffolding within which individual psychology operates, and their inclusion acknowledges that laboratory behaviour is never purely a matter of personal choice. Sterility requirements, biosafety rules and experimental demands constrain what is possible at the bench, and a written, enforced protocol can either widen or narrow the space for sustainable action. By testing this factor alongside the psychological variables, the study offers a template for future research that treats individual motivation and organisational structure as interacting forces rather than competing explanations.

The broader context makes the study timely. Scientific research generates an enormous and growing stream of single-use plastic waste, and the sector’s reliance on disposable consumables has proven difficult to reconcile with sustainability goals. Yet laboratories are also places of unusually high expertise and, often, strong environmental values, which makes the gap between attitude and action especially frustrating. By showing that perceived behavioural control outweighs both attitude and social norms in this population, the Malaysian findings point toward a specific, actionable strategy: give laboratory users real options, clear procedures and genuine capability, and sustainable behaviour is likely to follow. The authors present their work as a contribution to the growing discourse on sustainable laboratory practices, offering recommendations for policy and organisational initiatives aimed at reducing single-use plastic waste in research settings. If the message spreads, the humble pipette tip box may finally get the recycling infrastructure its users have long intended to give it.

Subject of Research: Psychological determinants of sustainable single-use plastic waste management behaviour among laboratory users

Article Title: Sustainable single-use plastic waste management among laboratory users using theory of planned behaviour

Article References: Tan, Y. H., Gew, L. T., Raja Ali, R. A., & Ooi, P. B. (2026). Sustainable single-use plastic waste management among laboratory users using theory of planned behaviour. Discover Sustainability. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43621-026-04891-2

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s43621-026-04891-2

Keywords: theory of planned behaviour, single-use plastic, laboratory waste, sustainable waste management, PLS-SEM, environmental awareness, perceived behavioural control, behavioural intention, Malaysia, environmental psychology, laboratory sustainability, waste management protocol