Hi Reader, let me quickly follow up on something we discussed last week.
I’ve put together an (almost) exhaustive list of ways to make your HPLC more sustainable - you can take a look here.
As you might know, I provide consulting for labs and institutes.
And to inspire you, let me share the most creative practices I observed during my last job:
Today's Lesson: A Sustainable Lab-Walk Through
Showing you what a sustainable lab can look like
Number Of The Day
You can buy a vacuum filter system to sterilize media and other fluids that are made entirely of plastic. In other words, after each filtration, you throw away about 214 g of plastic . Both the filter funnel on top (125g) and the collection bottle (89g) are single-use. Of course, you can use glass bottles with reusable filter funnels, where you only replace the filter membrane cutting the waste to a few grams after all.
214
Compiling Sustainable Practices
When we think of creativity in the lab, we normally relate it to cool experiments or interpreting confusing results.
But creativity also plays a crucial role in shaping how we work.
We saw this graphic two lessons ago. Here, it’s all about rethinking and rejecting in order to find creative solutions!
Many of the most effective sustainable practices don’t come from buying new products but from asking whether the “standard way” is really the only way:
Microbiology – Streaking Differently
Every microbiologist knows the odd frustration of throwing away a sterile plastic spreader after just one use.
One Postdoc I was working with instead bent the end of a pipette tip. It’s sterile, fast, and avoids an entire category of single-use items.
Pro tip: it works best with a P200 tip – a P1000 is often too large in diameter and therefore too stiff.
Molecular Biology – Electroporation & Gels
Another Postdoc I worked with mentioned that they reused their electroporation cuvettes. I was intrigued!
> Because of their contact with bacteria and the metal parts, they are usually autoclaved and then landfilled, never recycled.
In their lab, cuvettes are reused in some cases more than 50 times with a defined cleaning routine:
Rinse with water, wash with ethanol, rinse again, rinse twice with deionized water, air-dry, and UV-sterilize for 20 minutes.
Once the plastic starts to turn milky and brittle, they switch to a new one.
Another really big surprise for me followed - one that perfectly demonstrates how teamwork saves waste.
In their lab, agarose gels are reused until they’re fully consumed. If lanes remain unused, gels are kept in buffer for up to five days so someone else can finish them.
For quick control experiments, gels are even “combed from both sides,” doubling their use. Since many run similar conditions, gels (often at 1%) are shared.
Moreover, the two Postdocs were also very consistent in reusing tips:
I couldn’t believe my own eyes. At this point I knew that I had finally met someone who was pushing the boundaries of sustainable practices even more than I was. Moreover, I want to point out that I did not wear gloves. No one there did, because it was all just routine PCR work. For qPCR, EtBr, or S2 work, of course, things look different.
The most exciting example: they kept their tips in the tubes where they prepared their solutions. For example, they found that with some primers, this practice did no harm and ensured the same tip was reused.
Biochemistry – Saving Time and Plastic
I was working with another scientist who had to resuspend pellets in a workflow that often included 6–50 samples.
Interestingly, he chose to use 2 mL flat-bottom tubes instead of the common 1.5 mL conical tubes, even though he worked with less than 1 mL in volume.
He did this because the flat bottom allowed him to vortex the tubes to resuspend the pellet. Imagine how much plastic and time he saved in that way.
Applying The Knowledge
Sustainable practice doesn’t mean reusing everything everywhere.
The key is differentiating where, when, and how you can make adjustments without putting your science at risk.
For example, take samples and controls. If you are running an assay, you never want to risk cross-contamination, so reusing pipette tips is a no-go for your samples.
Of note, there was even a chance to reuse tips for the samples—in this LDH assay, he was able to use the very same tip to add the stop solution, since at this point he was pipetting mainly against the plate wall and cross-contamination was no longer a concern.
But for controls, like a standard curve, it might be feasible.
Another possible differentiation is between quantitative and qualitative data.
If you’re just checking a plasmid digest on an agarose gel, reusing a tip might be fine because you only want to see if the cut worked. But for qPCR you would probably want to change the tip.
Essentially, it’s important to always understand why you are doing a particular step instead of only focusing on what the protocol tells you to do - and if you need a list to inspire you, access it here.
Upcoming Lesson:
Quantifying Impacts
How We Feel Today
If you have a wish or a question, feel free to reply to this Email. Otherwise, wish you a beautiful week! See you again on the 28th : )
Edited by Patrick Penndorf Connection@ReAdvance.com Lutherstraße 159, 07743, Jena, Thuringia, Germany Data Protection & Impressum If you think we do a bad job: Unsubscribe
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