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Greening automation: Wash and Re-use of disposable 384-well liquid handling tips to enable sustainable high-throughput vaccine development
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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.
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Reducing laboratory plastic waste: reuse of consumable pipette tips for trace chemical analysis.
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Scientists have developed a cleaning method that lets labs safely reuse plastic pipette tips (small plastic nozzles used to measure liquids) instead of tossing them after one use, cutting down on plastic waste and carbon emissions. This matters because labs generate huge amounts of single-use plastic waste, and less plastic waste means fewer plastics ending up in landfills, waterways, and eventually breaking down into microplastics that can enter our food and water supply. The catch: reuse only works well for certain chemical tests, so labs need to check it's right for their specific work before adopting it.
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Researchers demonstrated that pipette tips used in trace chemical analysis can be safely cleaned and reused by washing with a 50:50 ethanol-water solution, reducing plastic laboratory waste without compromising analytical performance for emerging contaminants in wastewater.
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An audit of laboratory plastic waste found that 87% by weight was recyclable polymer, and a separate-collection scheme for polystyrene and polypropylene achieved 85% user acceptance while enabling high-quality monostream recycling. Laboratories generate an estimated 5.5 million tonnes of plastic waste annually, making this blueprint for lab plastic circularity directly relevant to reducing a significant and largely untracked source of plastic entering waste streams.
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Scientists built a machine that automatically cleans water samples to detect tiny plastic particles, cutting out slow manual lab work. Tests showed it reliably captured 97 to 100% of microplastics without contaminating samples, making it easier to track plastic pollution in rivers and lakes, an important step toward understanding how much of this plastic ends up in our water supply.
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Research digests by email
When a large batch of papers lands in the Atlas, we read through it and send a short write-up of what stood out.