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Reduce your lab's footprint with product choices that generate less waste and use fewer resources.
When minimizing waste in your lab, every little bit helps—whether it’s reducing or eliminating plastic or developing opportunities to safely reuse materials.
Part of designing our products is examining how we source and use our raw materials. Our scientists and engineers continually look for new opportunities to better align our purchases to our production, either by avoiding excess materials or buying bulk quantities to minimize packaging waste and the environmental impact of frequent shipments.
Less waste criteria
Our products that generate less waste meet one or more of the following criteria:
- Reduces the need to use other materials (e.g., plastic consumables) by at least 25%
- Generates at least 25% less waste than preceding or comparable product
- Is made with at least 25% less material by mass, or replaces two or more products, resulting in fewer materials
- Contains a prescribed minimum percentage of recycled content
- Incorporates recycled content
- Includes content from renewable resources
- Has a longer shelf life or useful life compared to preceding or comparable product
- Reduces the need for water and is more water efficient by at least 20% compared to preceding or comparable product
Browse selected greener lab plasticware and consumable products
Sustainability impact: Samco UrineGUARD Specimen Containers are made from 31% post-industrial recycled plastic material. All manufacturing container waste from the product series is collected, processed into recycled resin pellets at a recycling facility and returned for use within the same manufacturing process. By including recycled plastic resin, we reduce the virgin petroleum-based feedstock needed to manufacture them.
Sustainability impact: Compared to traditional protein quantitation assay methods such as the Bradford assay, the Qubit Protein BR Assay Kit generates 85% less plastic waste.
Sustainability impact: ART Reload Towers for 200 uL tips provide ten racks of tips using on 870 g of material compared to 1,590 g for ten hinged racks of the same style representing a 45% reduction in plastic waste. The ART Reload Towers for 20 uL and 1,000 uL tips generate 53% and 54% less waste, respectively.*
ART Reload Inserts also create less waste-23% for the 2000 uL size, 25% for the 20 uL size, and 18% for the 1,000 uL size when compared to hinged racks.*
Sustainability impact: Researchers use various strategies to counteract the 'edge effect' of standard plates, such as taping plates, preincubation, and avoidance of outer wells. However, these workaround strategies are inefficient in material use, labor, or both. In contrast, by requiring fewer materials and enabling effective use of all 96 wells, Nunc Edge 2.0 plates maximize time, budget, and resources. Overall, they produce up to 9% less plastic waste and 37.5% more useful capacity.
Browse selected greener, lower waste equipment and instruments
Sustainability impact: Low sheath fluid usage-generates only about 1-2 L of biological waste per run versus the 20 L generated by conventional cytometers, a reduction of 90-95%.*
Sustainability impact: Compared to a traditional depth filtration workflow, the DynaSpin Single-Use Centrifuge generates up to 69% less filter waste and up to 74% less liquid waste. The resulting material and equipment reduction can shrink the overall manufacturing suite footprint by up to 32% and the warehouse space footprint by up to 78%.
Sustainability impact: With the QuantStudio 7 Pro Dx system, our engineers focused on building the instrument’s capabilities into a smaller form factor. As a result, it uses 46% less material than the prior model, generates 81% less waste during calibration and uses up to 26% less energy. Its smaller footprint also improves freight density to help reduce emissions during transit.
Sustainability insights
