Hello Reader, how many tips do you think the average scientist uses each week?
As outlined in a previous publication, it can be quite simple to reduce up to 65% of the plastic waste generated in experiments—even under sterile conditions.
Today, we will dive deeper into how we can reduce plastic waste in a rather unique way.
In other words, it’s not just about the tips themselves, but also about what surrounds them.
Today's Lesson: Pipette Tip Refill Systems
Enabling significant plastic savings for labs
Number Of The Day
Polypropylene is not only used to package food; it is also the main component of pipette tips and tip boxes. However, only about 10–15% of all polypropylene worldwide is collected for recycling, and recycling facilities often convert 85%at best of that. In laboratory environments, these numbers are likely even lower, since many facilities cannot process small items like pipette tips. Therefore, reducing waste remains the most effective practice available to us.
85
Saving Waste With Refill Systems
This piece is dedicated to Labcon (specifically to Tim, Fred, and Tom, whom I’ve been in contact with for several years now) — for their sponsoring, sharing proprietary data, and for providing deeper insights into their product development for this piece.
Saving Plastic Beyond Tips
According to a study by Freese et al., the average biochemist uses about 8,470 pipette tips per year—that’s over 36 tips per working day.
After a common week in the lab...
However, this also translates to about 1.5 tip boxes per week – and this is where, for some groups, the bigger savings potential lies:
Let us throw around some numbers for 200 μL tips:
A single tip weighs approximately 0.33 g → 31.68 g for 96 tips in one box
A box comes with packaging that weighs 100 g on average (I found values ranging from 50–142 g)
That means for a full tip box, the tips themselves make up only 32% of the total weight.
Based on the numbers by Freese et al., if you reduce your tip usage by 50% through optimized protocol design, you will save 1.397 kg of plastic per year – a significant amount.
And still, it equates to only 12% of all plastic involved.
The inner section within the Pipette Tip Weight refers to the 50% savings.
The associated reduction in tip boxes makes up 4.4 kg, or 38% by itself.
Still, there is a way to increase the tip box savings to 68%, thereby boosting overall plastic reduction to approximately 80%!
Leveraging Refill Systems
Ever heard of pipette tip refill systems? Instead of purchasing full boxes of tips or manually sticking/racking tips yourself, these systems allow you to reuse the tip racks and only refill the tips.
Aside from saving the time to stick/rack tips, they enable significant plastic savings:
A refill system weighs 179 g for 10×96 tips (Labcon system)
A traditional box setup? Over 1,000 g for the same amount of tips
That’s an >82% reduction in packaging weight.
Of note, we made a small simplification here: we used 100 g as the weight of a single tip box but included all packaging waste for the refill system.
In detail, the packaging Labcon’s refill system consists of:
43% (77 g) of 100% recycled and FSC-certified paper (Forest Stewardship Council)
There’s a reason I chose to talk about Labcon's system. The aforementioned 82% reduction in packaging assumes you're using their system, which currently appears to be the most lightweight on the market.
To give perspective: many competitor refill systems result in 72% to 243% more plastic waste, depending on the model you're currently using.
In other words, as of my current knowledge, Labcon has the most sustainable refill system, just like PHCBI has the lowest energy freezer and Waters the most sustainable MS instrument.
Although the main goal is to let you know about the most sustainable options, there is something else I really care about:
Looking Behind The Curtain
In addition to the reduction in weight, some truly interesting developments have occurred since their previous model refill system in 2005:
Switched from regular to soy-based inks: reducing volatile organic compounds and making paper easier to recycle
Now, only 23% of the packaging is considered unusable (the rest serves a functional purpose)
Continued use of a previously developed patented solution that allows thinner, yet durable, wafers—saving plastic waste in places (at least I) would have never expected
I am sharing this because Labcon was the first to introduce a refill system, however, they worked hard to optimize beyond weight reduction.
Although we might expect that from companies who compete for market share, this process is not simple:
For example, Labcon originally used compostable plastic.
The issue: no one had the industrial composting infrastructure at the time—pretty much negating the benefits. Therefore, they have now switched to bioplastics for the base instead.
Applying The Knowledge
If you take away one thing, then that savings from refill systems are enormous:
Of course, a bioinformatician just doing genomics work will probably only use 1 box of tips per week averaged across an entire year.
However, during my own biochemistry and immunology projects that involved several assays, I easily used 3 boxes per day, 3 days a week.
In summary, that is 50–400 boxes per person per year:
Traditional system: 5–40 kg of waste per person per year
With Labcon’s refill system: 0.89–7.1 kg waste per person per year
The numbers are based on the example outlined above with 50and 400 boxes as the low and high use, respectively. The tiny block in the lower right says, "Low Use Labcon Refill System.
In the high-consumption example, we’re talking about a research institute with 300 scientists, saving 9.6 tons of waste!
And that is another discussion, CO₂e benefits might be even higher, given that paper recycling rates are higher than for plastics.
My Tip: Check out now whether this is how you can save waste!
Final Pragmatic tip: Discard your refill system packaging into recycling bins, not sterilization waste to ensure recyclability and avoid unnecessary autoclaving. However, check your local regulations. In some regions, anything touched in the lab is considered contaminated—regardless of actual risk.
Conversely, talking lifespan, Labcon's racks can be autoclaved up to 20 times without a drop in quality.
Upcoming Lesson:
Making PCRs Sustainable
How We Feel Today
References
Kasper, J.B. et al., Losses and emissions in polypropylene recycling from household packaging waste. 2025. Waste Management, 191, 230–241. doi:10.1016/j.wasman.2024.11.029.
Antonopoulos, I. et al., Recycling of post-consumer plastic packaging waste in the EU: Recovery rates, material flows, and barriers. 2021. Waste Management, 126, 694–705. doi:10.1016/j.wasman.2021.04.002.
Freese, T. et al., The relevance of sustainable laboratory practices. 2024. RSC Sustainability, 2(5), 1300–1336. doi:10.1039/d4su00056k.
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