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Greening automation: Wash and Re-use of disposable 384-well liquid handling tips to enable sustainable high-throughput vaccine development
Summary
Researchers developed a protocol for washing and reusing disposable plastic tips in automated laboratory workflows for vaccine development, significantly reducing single-use plastic waste. The approach demonstrates that laboratory plastic consumption can be substantially cut without compromising analytical accuracy.
Laboratory automation uses large amounts of plastic consumables, generating substantial single-use plastic waste. Automated ELISAs are an indispensable analytical tool in vaccine formulation and process development. Current workflows, however, rely on disposable liquid handling tips. In progress toward sustainability, we developed workflows for washing 384-well format liquid handling tips, using nontoxic reagents, for re-use during ELISA testing. We estimate that this workflow reduces plastic and cardboard waste in our facility by 989 kg/year and 202 kg/year, respectively, without introducing new chemicals into our waste steam.