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

Scientists at Concept Life Sciences are becoming increasingly conscious of the environmental impact of their work, especially when planning synthetic routes and optimising chemical processes. This green mindset is applied to every aspect of lab life and we therefore make a concerted effort to minimise consumption of single use materials. But, is the use of re-usable glass over single-use plastic more sustainable?

Dr Farley and Dr Nicolet, in a joint project made a carbon footprint assessment to quantify differences between single-use plastics and re-usable glass in a laboratory setting: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.01.14.476337v1 For example, the single-use plastic tube footprint included manufacturing of raw material, moulding, transport and disposal. For the re-usable glass tube, the footprint included the manufacture of raw material, moulding, transport, washing, autoclaving and drying. The authors also estimated the cost for single-use and re-use scenarios.

The scientists found that re-use scenarios resulted in an up to 11-fold reduction in CO2 environmental footprint. In addition, the long-term financial costs of re-use was either similar or much lower than the single-use costs even when technical staff cost was taken into account.