Green Labs Purchasing
SUSTAINABLE PURCHASING
What to watch for when shopping green for chemicals and laboratory supplies
The ACT Label
Look up the ACT label for a particular product, which gives a score on sustainability and environmental impact. It also shows the life cycle of each product. ACT stands for Accountability, Consistency, and Transparency.
Certified B Corporations
When making purchases, look for laboratory vendors that are B Corp certified. A Certified B Corporation™ is a for-profit company that meets the highest verified standards for social and environmental responsibility, legal accountability, and public transparency. There are nearly 4,000 B Corps™, spanning 150 industries in 74 countries, united in the goal of redefining success in business. To become a certified B Corp™, a company’s performance is measured in five categories: customers, community, environment, workers, and governance. The certification is reassessed every three years, promoting companies to continue to drive toward excellence. Together the B Corp community works to reduce inequality and poverty, build stronger communities, create high-quality jobs, and promote a healthier environment. The biotechnology sector is welcome to take part in these efforts.
Green Laboratory Practices
- Consolidate orders to minimize number of shipments.
- Recycle paper, cardboard and styrofoam used for packing.
- Use reloads for non-filter pipette tips to cut back on plastic boxes.
- Use Genesee 15ml and 50ml conicals (21 series), that come in a plastic rack that can be autoclaved, frozen, sprayed with ethanol, and recycled in general recycling.
- The T-Gen and S-gen gloves are packed 2000 gloves a unit (200/box), which cuts back on cardboard.
- Check for super bulk packaging options for some items.
- Reduce waste by purchasing perishable items from vendors that offer paper coolers that are 100% recyclable.
Vendors with Recycling Programs and Sustainable Products and Packaging
Corning, Falcon, and Axygen product packaging can be recyled through Corning's packaging program.
Items not allowed for recycling:
No actual products, biohazard materials, liquids, radioactive waste, or regulated waste of any kind. No packaging from biologically coated products (Corning BioCoatTM, Corning Matrigel®, etc.).No cardboard/corrugated boxes. No packaging materials from other manufacturers. Because Corning pays a fee per box, please only recycle plastic packaging from Corning’s brands (Corning, Costar, Falcon, and Axygen). Packaging from other brands will be returned to customers at their own expense.
Fisher Scientific offers a variety of biodegradable products, including nitrile gloves, reclosable zipper bags, flagging tape, reagent reservoirs, a large variety of sorbent materials, and soaps/cleaners/cleaning materials.
Fisher also has the Greener Choice Program, with an icon to help identify products that:
- Offer one or more environmental benefit itemized in the U.S. FTC “Green Guides”
- Confirmation that the stated product attributes are environmentally preferable to products within the same category
- Assurance that the environmental benefit claims remain substantiated over time
- Receipt of a signed Certificate of Compliance from the supplier stating that all environmental claims on the products (or line of products) sold by Thermo Fisher Scientific comply with the requirements of all applicable state and federal laws governing environmental marketing claims
Paper Coolers
Our paper coolers protect temperature-sensitive products as effectively as expanded polystyrene (EPS) foam coolers — and they’re completely recyclable. For every 10,000 paper coolers we ship, more than 6,500 cubic feet of EPS is kept from landfill
Kimberly-Clark Professional has a take-back recycling program, RightCycle, for hard to recycle products of their design. Products include protective clothing, nitrile cloves, safety glasses, masks and respirators, and wipes. Collected eligible items are transported to their recycling partner where products are sorted, processed into plastic pellets and made into new consumer products.
Polystyrene Cooler Returns
- After you receive your insulated order from MilliporeSigma, remove the product from the cooler, making sure to leave the empty cooler in the box.
- Put the cooler lid back on the container and then flip the flaps of the box so the pre-paid postage stamp is on the outside of the container.
- Seal the container using shipping tape.
- Drop off the box at any location where the United States Postal Service picks up mail.
Recyclable Plant-based Coolers
Millipore Sigma's "Greener Cooler" is made of paper and starch, so it's acceptable for curbside recycling with other paper and corrugated cardboard.
- Remove the products and ice pack from the box.
- Flatten the box and the insulation material.
- Place them both in the recycling bin.
Biopharma Recycling Program
The company's Biopharma Recycling Program recycles single-use product waste into industrial-grade plastic lumber products. Even when classified as biohazardous, plastic biopharma waste can be safely recycled into traceable plastic products.
Genesee offers biodegradable nitrile gloves, as well as additional green options and practices:
- Pipet tip recycling programs in place at North Carolina, Washington, and California schools.
- Styrofoam cooler recycling/reuse.
- Optimized green shipping processes.
- Consolidated orders minimizes number of shipments.
- Recycled paper and cardboard used for packing instead of Styrofoam and packing peanuts.
- LED lighting uses in Genessee Scientific facilities.
- Solar panels used to power the company's San Diego warehouse.
- Reloads for non-filter tips cut back on plastic boxes.
- 15ml and 50ml conicals (28 series) come in a plastic rack that can be autoclaved, frozen, sprayed with ethanol, and RECYCLED in general recycling.
- The T-Gen and S-gen gloves are packed 2000 gloves a unit (200/box) which cuts back on cardboard.
- Super bulk packaging options for some items.
New England Labs is a certified B Corporation that provides a wide variety of products with focus on molecular biology and enzymology. The company produces and supplies recombinant and native enzyme reagents for the life science research, as well as providing products and services supporting genome editing, synthetic biology and next-generation sequencing. NEB also provides free access to research tools such as REBASE, InBASE, and Polbase. The company introduced 100% recyclable packaging for cold chain shipping in partnership with TemperPack in 2020.
Planet-Safe offers sustainable cell culture labware, made from 100% renewable resources and designed with carbon reduction in mind.
Polycarbin provides circular solutions to laboratory plastic waste by remanufacturing low-carbon lab products from recycled scientific plastics. Their closed-loop supply chain sells the plastic lab products you use most, with added take-back programs that utilize the recycled material into the creation of new lab plastics.