SP0326: SAD Green Lab Glassware Transition & Genome Dishwasher Accessory Upgrade

MOOS and GLI @ McGill are encouraging labs to reduce/reuse single use laboratory plastics, the GLI@SAD team is looking to augment their existing infrastructure to be able to accomplish this goal effectively and sustainably for 5 new labs and one existing lab. For 1.5 years, the GLI @ SAD team has been educating labs on how researchers can participate in environmentalism. The most attractive action is to reuse single use plastics and/or to avoid them all together. Through the purchase of washable/sterilizable lab glassware alternatives, labs can greatly reduce the plastic content of their biohazardous waste while gaining monetary savings. However, washing these glass alternatives by hand is time consuming for researchers and wastes water which is NOT sustainable. Through upgrading an existing laboratory grade Steris Reliance Dishwasher located in room 7500 of the Genome building, both SAD & Genome labs can use this new flexibility to make their labs “greener”. This is of immediate benefit to the 5 SAD labs in this application, will also help the Bui Lab who has used glass for 1.5 years already, & will support future labs who hope to join but are not quite ready right now.

In this application we are bundling these requests and asking for 5000$ Green Lab funding for each lab to “convert to glass” + the funding required to update our existing dishwasher infrastructure allowing it to accommodate these specialized glassware items like serological pipettes and petri dishes. This project is the most sustainable/efficient option for any lab from the Genome & SAD buildings as the buildings are close & interconnected via a tunnel. The dishwasher in question is very flexible in usage & location; it can wash many different lab items at once using 3 different accessories during one cycle & is in the same space as the autoclaves. This flexibility promotes full dishwasher loads while making it convenient for labs as essential tasks (dishwashing & autoclaving) are grouped & already happen in 7500. Washing these combined items via a dishwasher will save more then 85 liters of water per cycle while washing 3 times more glassware than traditional sink hook up methods. Lastly, this application will also support a small one lab pilot trial for glassware use within tissue culture spaces – an unprecedented attempt at McGill which represents a LARGE hurdle for many labs. This hurdle within tissue culture work is primarily due to potential cross contamination of level 2 biohazardous samples, and then due to a decade's worth of habitual rountines which are hard to change. In summary, this is a “one time” purchase that will have immediate and long-lasting green lab culture changes across 2 large Downtown McGill campus buildings.