This article was initially published in January 2024. It was updated in September 2025 to reflect new developments.
Climate change is perhaps the biggest issue the planet is facing at the moment. With the oceans reaching record highs in temperature, sustainability practices to combat global warming are at the forefront of people’s minds – in all aspects of life. From ditching plastic straws to plastic bag levies in supermarkets, avoiding the use of one time and short-lived consumables is key to a healthy and happy planet. But how does this translate to the lab, where sustainability has famously been difficult?
In this feature, we take a look at the importance of sustainability in the lab, and the practices you can employ to ensure a happy and eco-friendly environment.
The problem
Anyone with experience in the lab will know how much plastic waste is generated from even the most basic of experiments. With constant changing of pipette tips, extensive use of disposable Eppendorf tubes and regular glove changes, laboratories are responsible for over 5 million tons of plastic waste each year.
And it doesn’t stop there. High-powered equipment can guzzle electricity, leading to a massive drain on energy. Additionally, gallons of water may be needed to maintain the work of the lab each day.
But with so much vital research hinging on the maintenance of this technology, how can we begin to tackle the ongoing problems of waste and sustainability in science?
Plastic usage
A huge amount of waste in a laboratory setting comes from the high number of single-use plastics, notably in the form of disposable pipette tips. While the most basic advice could be to reuse where possible, a need for precision and a requirement to avoid contamination make this solution infeasible. This means that tips must be changed after each use; some scientists report using hundreds of tips in a day! To compound this issue, pipette tips and other items are usually not recyclable due to contamination with potentially harmful materials and contact with biohazards.
So, what is the solution? While we’re unlikely to get to a point where pipette tips can be fully sustainable, some labs are now reverting back a few decades to the use of cleanable, glass pipette tips for experiments. Additionally, many scientists are moving away from the use of one-time plastic petri dishes and other lab stables to easily cleanable glass versions. Why don’t you take a look at some of the potential options to employ this technique in your lab?
The effects of using so many pipette tips don’t end there. With so many tips being used in quick succession, the boxes that they come in also contribute to a significant proportion of plastic waste in labs – some scientists have reported that this equals around 80% of their waste! To combat this, there are now recycling schemes for pipette tip boxes. Lab groups can even choose to recycle their own boxes in-house by receiving tips in a larger container, decanting them into old boxes and autoclaving them on-site for sterilisation. If on-site options aren’t feasible for your lab, check out some recycling options here.
Case Study – A sustainable PCR
The COVID-19 pandemic led to widespread use of PCR tests. Already a staple in the lab, PCRs are known to generate a significant amount of waste. Typically, a kit can only be used once, and the exponential increase in demand during the pandemic led to a shortage of resources.
To combat this issue and tackle waste, a team of researchers from Switzerland developed a method to recycle primers and nucleotides from used PCR kits by depolymerising the DNA strands. The technique resulted in a 75% success rate and showed that it is possible to directly recycle these materials.
Mind the electric bills!
Soaring energy costs have been at the forefront of the cost-of-living debate in recent months. However, we still see extremely high consumption in laboratories. In fact, it is thought that a lab uses more than ten times the amount of energy of an office-based workplace.
Of course, ultra-low temperature freezers and high-powered centrifuges are often unavoidable tools in the lab, but what can you do to cut down on your energy consumption?
Aside from the obvious ideas of switching equipment off when you don’t need to use it, some suggest carefully considering which reagents you need and don’t need. By decluttering your fridges and freezers, you can increase energy efficiency and even create space that you could share with the lab next door – if you like them, that is! Additionally, consider whether your samples actually need to be kept at the traditional -80°C; some reagents may survive at a slightly higher temperature, a small change that could significantly improve your energy efficiency! In fact, a number of labs have now signed up to My Green Lab’s Freezer Challenge, which sees scientists housing their reagents at -70°C. Research has shown that many chemicals and other resources do survive well at this temperature, and this small change could cut freezer-related energy consumption by 40%! To take this even further, long-term studies are being conducted to test if even higher temperatures are feasible.
An example of labs adopting a breakthrough energy efficiency method is at Princeton University. The Minus 80 scheme has been adopted by a number of labs, wherein scientists will be alerted if the freezer drops to below or rises above -80°C; dropping too low can be an unnecessary waste of energy, whilst rising too high can put samples in jeopardy. By alerting scientists to these errors in a timely manner, they can be easily rectified.
There are a number of other small changes you can adopt to make the lab eco-friendlier. To keep the energy costs of using a fume hood as low as possible, simply shutting the sash as much as you can whilst still maintaining your necessary range of movement can significantly reduce waste. Likewise, dropping the holding temperature of PCR machines and setting timers to ensure timely retrieval of samples can make a big difference. Likewise, moving from using water baths to bead heat baths can not only save energy but also water waste.
Digital sustainability
Not only do the physical resources uses in labs generate waste, digital resources can also impact the environment. While the effects may seem invisible, data centres consume massive amounts of electricty and water, electronic devices are often not recyclable, and many tools are manufactured using rare Earth minerals. Staying mindful of data stored in the cloud can help to mitigate some of these concerns.
However, in 2025, a greater problem is emerging; AI. Not only does the use of generative AI tools require signficant resources, training the models comes at a huge expense of energy. The necessary data centres use large amounts electricity and water for cooling to prevent their servers from overheating; some facilities consume gallons of water hourly for this purpose. Carbon emissions are also a concern, with a 2019 study showing that training one AI model can the same amount of CO2 as five cars over their entire lifespans.
As AI becomes more integrated in daily life and a staple tool in the lab, it’s important to use it responsibly; some estimates suggest that a single ChatGPT query could use 10x more energy than a simple Google search. It’s important, therefore, to be mindful of using AI only when it is truly required.
Green chemistry
A slightly more intense method of waste reduction – that may not be applicable to everyone – is the adoption of ‘green chemistry principles.’ Developed in 1998, the guidelines suggest adopting practices and procedures where the least waste and the least hazardous materials are required. Figure 1 below outlines the 12 rules of green chemistry.
Figure 1: Image describing the 12 principles of green chemistry. Taken from Trombino et al., 2023.
Whilst these principles primarily refer to chemistry, many of them are applicable in a life sciences setting, particularly the guidelines related to waste and avoiding hazardous products, the latter of which can increase a lab’s capability to recycle. Many labs across the country are now adopting these principles and institutions are educating their staff on the guidelines. For example, the American Chemical Society provides resources to help with implementing the rules in your workspace.
Not sure of the alternatives to hazardous chemicals? Check out this handy resource from Beyond Benign. A common example is the use of SybrSafe and GelRed instead of ethylene bromide in agarose gels.
Eco-friendly at the source
Of course, sometimes it may not be possible to make these changes yourself. That’s why it can be equally as important to obtain your products and reagents from sustainable companies. A number of well-known manufacturers worldwide are now striving to become more eco-friendly, meaning that your raw experimental reagents can be purchased guilt-free. Some examples of vendors adopting eco-friendly practices and committing to sustainability are Eurofins Genomics, Thermofisher, Roche and many more! Moreover, when ordering reagents and equipment, consider if you can share deliveries with nearby labs.
Necessary evils
Despite the importance of sustainability and measures to tackle climate change, there will always be some unavoidable procedures that must persist for the betterment of human health and fundamental research. Without some unsustainable practices, research would halt; we would not be able to use high performance computers, run large centrifuges or pipette liquids from one tube to another. So, whilst we should all be striving to make savings where we can, ultimately, the impact that each individual lab may have is small. That said, when we all work together, we can achieve great things – if you’re running a lab and wondering if adopting sustainable practices is worth it, then think about what would happen if everyone implemented just one of the above principles.
If we all work together, we can make the world a better and healthier place, not just through the research outcomes, but also through the processes used to get there.
