More responsible packaging and shipping

Generate less packaging waste, maximize recyclability and reduce size for more efficient shipping and storage in the lab.

Packaging must protect the product inside—but that doesn’t require sustainability sacrifices. We are developing solutions to reduce packaging, replace non-recyclable materials and ship products at ambient temperatures whenever feasible.

As we continue refining our packaging to reduce environmental footprint, we aim to:

Support recycling, increasing our use of recycled content and recyclable plastics
Source more sustainable materials, replacing petroleum-based plastics with bioplastic alternatives and opting for paper-based alternatives to plastic when feasible
Optimize design for transport efficiency, increasing cubic efficiency through packaging redesign and expanding use of returnable systems

Our essential aim is to give you less packaging waste to deal with while maximizing packaging recyclability and reducing package size for more efficient shipping and storage in the lab.

We work with our transport partners to reduce emissions, prioritizing ocean and ground shipments over air transport. In a key air travel route, a pilot initiative shifted 37% of shipments to ocean transport, cutting 5,000 metric tons of CO2e.*

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Responsibly packaged criteria

Our products that are responsibly packaged meet one or more of the following criteria:

Product requires no packaging
Product ships ambient instead of cold chain compared to preceding or comparable product, avoiding use of shipping coolers and coolants
Product has less packaging material compared to preceding or comparable product
Packaging includes recycled content
Packaging has a third-party environmental certification
Packaging is designed to be reusable or returnable
Packaging is designed to be degradable/recyclable

View complete list of Greener by design products

Browse selected products and technologies that improve packaging and shipping

AmpliTaq Gold 360

Applied Biosystems AmpliTaq Gold 360 and AmpliTaq 360 DNA Polymerases amplify a wide range of DNA contexts. Heat activates AmpliTaq Gold 360 DNA Polymerase, resulting in highly specific, robust PCR amplification. The ionic strength and the pH of AmpliTaq Gold 360 Master Mix are optimized for use with the AmpliTaq Gold 360 DNA Polymerase enzyme.

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Sustainability impact: These products now ship at ambient temperature rather than cold chain, eliminating the need for dry and gel ice as well as expandable polystyrene (EPS) foam coolers. Our functional and analytical testing demonstrated that shipping these products at ambient temperatures provides the same product quality as shipping on gel ice, without impacting long-term stability.

TaqMan Assays and TaqMan Primers and Probes

Applied Biosystems TaqMan Assays and Applied Biosystems TaqMan Primers and Probes are a comprehensive portfolio of real-time PCR primer and probe sets for use in a wide range of research applications. Featuring gold-standard chemistry, and intuitively designed using our proprietary bioinformatics pipeline, TaqMan Assays are used for gene expression, copy number variation, single-nucleotide polymorphism and microRNA analyses.

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Sustainability impact: Designed with sustainable packaging principles, TaqMan Assays and TaqMan Primers and Probes have 57% less packaging compared to the previous packaging design, without any impact on product integrity. These TaqMan products also reduce waste, now using paperboard and plastic packaging that contain less material than the original design.

ProQuantum Immunoassay Kits

ProQuantum immunoassay kits use more sustainable packaging and offer less waste than traditional immunoassay. How is this achieved? The assays' proximity-based amplification technology allows detection of lower protein levels with less sample input than traditional methods. With higher sensitivity and low sample consumption, you can get the most out of your precious samples and consume less plastic than other immunoassays.

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It's paper. It's cool. Our 100% paper cooler.

Our 100% recyclable paper cooler is a greener alternative to EPS coolers; it meets the thermal requirements necessary to uphold our stringent product quality standards. Though we still rely on EPS coolers to ship a portion of our cold-chain shipments, our 100% paper cooler is an important step forward in our sustainability journey.

Every 10,000 paper coolers shipped keeps more than 6,500 cubic feet of EPS from landfills.

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Reducing packaging waste with the Supply Center

Thermo Fisher Scientific's Supply Center consolidates ordering and procurement processes by providing instant access to green lab products and consumables. Through your Supply Center, you can choose from more than 1,400 greener product alternatives—simply look for the green leaf symbol.

Reduce packaging waste with Supply Center

supply center

Sustainability insights

Get the facts. Find details on all green product claims for each of our greener product lines.

We take sustainable product design seriously and believe all greener product claims should be transparently documented. For each of our greener product lines, we provide a green fact sheet that explains and substantiates the greener product claim(s) related to that product line.

Browse complete list of greener products