Reduce
Rethink your pipette strategies
Think about how you run your experiments. Is there a way to optimize so that you use fewer pipette tips?
- Good planning can mean you prepare your samples together and only use one pipette tip for each chemical, or if you have variable amounts, to pipette twice with a smaller tip, rather than switching to a bigger pipette tip for that one single sample. Can you , so that you can use smaller pipette tips?
- And yes, for most applications, you can reuse the same pipette or pipette tip if you don’t have enough volume and need to pipette twice. We’ve hear of people using multiple small pipettes to pipette multiple times to add up to the correct volume. If you can’t reuse, purchase serological pipettes that can hold larger volumes.
- Done in the right order, you can split a culture using only a single pipette
- If you’re washing an ELISA using a multipipettor, you don’t need to change the tips for each wash
- Doing tissue culture? Don’t throw away a pipette every time you pipette sterile medium. Instead, release it from the gun and leave it standing in the media bottle. When you need media again, just plugged the pipette gun onto the same pipette.
- Have one serological pipette in your media bottle, one in the PBS, and one in the trypsin. Leave cell resuspension as the last step so that your pipettes remains sterile and you can use it for multiple flasks.
- Consider making a reagent master mix before pipetting in your samples.
- For the appropriate experiment/chemical, you can also label the used pipette tip and reuse it multiple times throughout the day.
Reloading Tips
Beyond the actual tips themselves, reduce the amount of waste associated with pipette tips by reloading your own tips - either from a bag of tips, or an auto-reload system.
Buying bulk tips can really save on plastic waste, but they’re time consuming to fill.
You can 3D print a pipette tip loader.
The designs are free.
10 uL: [https://thingiverse.com/thing:4256563]
200 uL: [https://thingiverse.com/thing:4268044]
The base design is for Sarstedt tips. If you are using other tips in your lab, you need to measure them first and potentially need to make small modifications to the design. To edit, you need to download the Fusion 360 program (free). The file has 3 parameters: ‘pipette tip neck diameter’ (most important), ‘pipette tip belly diameter’ and ‘extra wide top diameter’. More details can be found on the design page.
Use Glass and Reusables
Choose tips made from recycled plastics or glass.
Exchange disposable transfer pipettes to glass droppers
(done by @orlawatters Waterford Institute of Technology)
Also consider hamilton syringes which go down to 1um. Also, there are bottle top dispensers (autoclavable) that go down to 50um.
In pre-history before micropipets, researchers used calibrated, often disposable, glass microcapillaries for transfering microliter amounts. The unit was not a microliter, but rather a lambda (written with the greek letter). Check out old papers. You can still buy them. Goes down to 1 microliter!
Photo credit: Wikipedia
Other
If you are using pipette tips for other uses, like upside down to cut circular holes in agar for antibiotic bioassays, wash and reuse that pipette tip. Or buy a metal coring tool.
Repair broken Pipette tip box hinges with autoclave tape
Non-pipettee systems
Echo - Uses sound waves to measure out liquids. $500-600K plus add-ons, and service contracts
Reuse
Pipette Tips
Wash Pipette Tip
Grenova Pipette Tip Washers
If using a tip charger system, can buy Ionfield Tip washer
Serological Pipettes
Continue reading about how to recycle pipette tips.
Wash and baking glass serological pipettes for cell culture. Bake overnight at 250-300c to nuke organics (endotoxin, RNAse)
Pipette tip boxes
Use them for autoclaving microcentrifuge tubes
Pipette tip boxes are great for storing small things in the lab
- great containers for maxiprep columns, non-sterile tweezers and other miscellaneous stuff
Use them to store cDNA (or other assorted products) if the inserts are still in place. P200 tip racks holes are the perfect size for PCR tubes and it helps keep things organized. Our cDNA tubes come in singles and are annoying to handle without a proper holder. You can put ice in the bottom.
- Repurpose pipette tip racks as PCR tube racks - Stack two together
P1000 tip boxes can be used for storing maxiprep columns
Box lids can be used as Wester Blott or SDS-PAGE staining trays.
Pippete tip boxes make great boxes for SEM stubs and Humidity chambers for IHC
Sanitize and use as crafting boxes or first aid boxes or other small item holder
Sanitize and use for growing plants.
As a Vase?
We’ve even heard of people using them as gift boxes for the holidays.
Post on Craig’s list, Kijiji, Facebook, Gumtree, FreeCycle, etc. We had a story where a construction person took 200 pipette tip boxes from a lab. They’re great for storing small parts.
Recycle
Pipette Tips
Although it is currently in its infancy, we have examples of successful pipette tip recycling. Usually, it means separating your tips into hazardous/non-hazardous, decontaminating them and then depositing them in a puncture proof recycling container. However, do not do this without the written approval from your waste hauler. If your waste hauler has not approved and they see pipette tips in the recycling bag, they will just throw away/incinerate the entire lot because they aren’t sure. It takes a bit of leg work to get a tip recycling program started, but it is completely possible.
Tip Boxes and Racks
Have a chat with your waste hauler. Many will probably take sanitized pipette tip boxes.
There are specialized schemes where you don’t necessarily need to go through your waste hauler for this.
Polycarbin - Closed-loop mail back service
AppCycle - UK only
Green Lab Recycling - They take pipette tip boxes, other polypropylene packaging items and PET bottles. They charge $100 - $250 per collection.
Genesee Scientific has an extensive free recycling program for pipette tip racks, office materials, and cardboard and styrofoam shipping containers.
Corning®, Falcon®, Costar®, and Axygen® packaging can all be mailed back for recycling just by printing a free shipping label. They take pipette tip racks, lids, plastic bags, shrinkwrap, centrifuge tube plastic bags, styrofoam racks, serological pipette plastic bags for cell culture wrappers, paper/plastic wrappers, plastic bags, plastic bags for cell culture dishes, plates, and flasks. Only for US labs.
Starlab Tip Box Scheme: - returned tip boxes are mostly recycled, but some are reused.
Anachem - They take back al pipette tip packaging. Their scheme provides wheelie bins, boxes or bags for you to separate and collect your waste.
Terracycle with VWR - Tip boxes, recycled into park benches
For more recyclers, see “Special Recyclers and Take Back Programs”
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