Re-use of labware reduces CO₂ equivalent footprint and running costs in laboratories

Abstract

Laboratory-based research is resource intensive in terms of financial costs and carbon footprint. Research laboratories require immense amounts of energy to power equipment and material, particularly of single-use item consumption. Reliance on single-use plastics within laboratories. Understanding the full carbon footprint of consumable usage is increasingly important as many research institutes commit to carbon neutrality. To date, no carbon footprint assessment has been conducted to detail the differences between single-use plastics, and reusable glass in a laboratory setting. Here, we analyse the CO2 equivalent (CO2e) footprint of utilising single-use plastics, or re-use of glass or plastic items within laboratory environments. We focused our assessment on four commonly utilised single-use items for mammalian cell and bacterial culture, and found that re-use scenarios result in substantial reduction in CO2e footprint up to 11-fold. In addition, we estimated the long-term running costs of re-use and single-use scenarios, and found that re-use had either similar or much lower running costs even when including technical staff wage. We concluded that research facilities must foster re-use in laboratory consumables, while reserving single-use items for select, defined cases. Our study highlights the need to account for indirect CO2e footprint in designing a carbon-neutral lab.

The paradox of the life sciences

“…We found that air drying of ethidium bromide gels before disposal reduces their weight by >95%, which decreased our amount of toxic waste by up to 80%. Reduce plastic waste by planning your experiments well, replacing single‐use plastics with glassware, and reusing plastic where possible (Bowler, 2022 ; preprint: Farley & Nicolet, 2022 ). Some producers also offer to take back their used consumables (e.g., tissue culture media bottles, pipette tip boxes, and gloves).…”

Green Labs: a guide to developing sustainable science in your organization

“…A selection of the many resources available to learn about environmental issues and sustainable science 1‐3 , 5‐7 , 9‐10 , 15‐20 , 22 , 24‐29 , 32‐58 , 64 , 67‐69 , 74‐76 , 81‐82 . This figure was created using BioRender.com.…”

“…(2) documentaries 35-37 ; (3) podcasts 38,39 ; (4) books [40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51] and even thoughtprovoking fictional works. 52 A range of excellent courses and training opportunities are also available, A growing collection of resources is also available to learn more about sustainability in a scientific setting, including reports 26 and articles on sustainable science, 18,19,20,24,27,53 waste in laboratories, [54][55][56] greener computing 57 and sustainable conferencing. 58 Many of these issues are also covered on The Caring Scientist: Mission Sustainable podcast.…”

Purchases dominate the carbon footprint of research laboratories

“…Such reduction was of the same order but smaller than that computed at the single laboratory scale. 42 The magnitude of this decrease is a function of the proportion of disposable plastic consumables in purchases emissions and can reach up to −5.6 ± 4.5 % for a LHS laboratory for which this type of purchases represented ∼ 8 % of purchases footprint. At last, efficiency and sufficiency measures resulting in a 2-fold reduction in the purchases of scientific consumables (MS6) resulted in a 5.9 ± 4.7 % and a 9.7 ± 7.8 % decrease in the total footprint of ST and LHS laboratories, respectively.…”