SP0268: Dishwasher to Reuse Plastic Labware

Considering that our current grant, (SPF0240), encourages the reduce/reuse/recycle philosophy when it comes to single use laboratory plastics (conical tubes, serological pipettes etc…) we are seeking the appropriate infrastructure to do so. Several of our initiatives have focused on educating research personnel on how to re-use laboratory plastics instead of trashing them in the garbage after a single use. However, reuse of laboratory plastics requires an efficient means of washing said plastics, and we believe that having a departmental, laboratory grade dishwasher for the effective washing of laboratory plastics would help achieve this goal. For this reason, we are requesting funds for the purchase of a laboratory grade dishwasher including relevant adaptors for glass bottles but most importantly for the washing of 5, 10, and 25 mL serological pipettes and 15 and 50 mL conical tubes. To reduce plastic waste, we are also looking into substituting our cell culture media formulation, adopting powder to be reconstituted in glass bottles as opposed to 500 mL single use plastic bottles. This substitution, in combination with a dishwasher, would allow our department to create a sustainable pipeline to re-use certain materials for cell culture that could be shared across labs. In our previous iteration, we requested funds to build serological pipette washing stations. We believe that having a dishwasher would reduce water consumption as we would be able to wash dishes, conical tubes and serological pipettes all at once in the same cycle thus the dishwasher would replace the need for them. We have used the Labconco dishwashing cost calculator and estimated that for a regular 5-day work week, a lab with 4-8 trainees/personnel wash on average 20-30 items per day and each item would be rinsed a minimum of three times with distilled water. Based on these numbers, the adoption of a dishwasher would save $2000 per year when accounting labour costs and the cost of distilled water, and would save over 20 liters of water per cycle. It would also save valuable time that could be dedicated to lab experiments. The addition of a Departmental dishwasher will help transform our current and future project goals into a long-term waste diversion solution. With the appropriate infrastructure in place, defined here as a laboratory-grade dishwasher, we believe it will be easier to adopt sustainable practices such as re-using laboratory plastics that historically have been trashed. This type of investment requires a one-time purchase and will allow us to create a culture change in our department and faculty towards being more environmentally concious and integrating greener solutions into our current laboratory practices.