Our people - Shaun O'Sullivan
I’ve
been with the Uni 18 years and I moved up from Underdale two years
ago, where I was involved in nursing. I run the biology lab at City
East as a Technical Officer.
I noticed first-year biology students were using a lot of consumables in their practicals - things like plastic containers and pipettes - and everything was just going in the one bin. It just seemed like a dumb thing that we, as a university were trying to teach them about living things and what they do on the planet, and yet we were basically reinforcing the idea that it’s OK to throw rubbish where they live.
So I looked at the idea of whether it was possible to have no bin in here at all; so that every single thing they use in here goes somewhere and something happens to it. It’s pretty complex because you have to work out, for example, what are the components of, say, gloves. Some of the gloves we had couldn’t be recycled so we had to change gloves. We had to find out the affordability and then there were availability issues.
It takes students a long while to get into the habit of recycling because it’s much easier for humans just to push all the stuff in one bin and walk away. But by the end of the semester, by being continually hammered about it, the students do end up being pretty good about it.
We’re now in a situation where we don’t have a bin in the lab. For students of biology, the study of life, it’s not too ridiculous to try and look after living things.
I got the Vice Chancellor’s award for excellence in leading change, which was pretty amusing because really, it was just getting some bins.
I finished a BSc about a year ago and I’m going to start honours this year. I’ve had the offer to do a couple of lectures this year, which is incredibly exciting for me. I like the idea that in the old days there was very much academic staff and guys who cleaned the beakers or typed the letters, whereas nowadays there are guys who are somewhere in the middle. I think the students feel a bit daunted by having their lecturing staff in the lab, so having someone who knows the nuts and bolts as well as the theory can be of help. I think it’s a useful position to be in.
Shaun O’Sullivan is a Technical Officer in the School of Pharmacy and Medical Sciences. He recently received the Vice Chancellor’s Awards for Professional Staff Excellence in Leading Change for the implementation of a recycling program in biology laboratories.