Making Science More Sustainable

IonField Systems provides practical solutions to help reduce your plastic footprint.

Call to Action

Adopting new protocols that leverage IonField products to reduce and reuse pipette tips and microplates is an important step that you can take today and we are committed to helping our customers achieve their environmental objectives.

It’s no secret that plastic pollution is a global issue, and the problem only seems to be growing.

  • The world is producing twice as much plastic as it was two decades ago.

  • With this boom in production, recycling efforts should have grown exponentially, but in reality, only 9% of the plastic produced is recycled, with 22% being mismanaged.

  • Every year 4-12 million tons of plastics enter our oceans, which is expected to double in the next 20 years. Microplastics are entering our food system and even our blood.

At IonField Systems, we believe that good science is the key to solving these issues, but in order to truly make a difference, the scientific process must become more sustainable.

AND LABS HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY TO BECOME MORE SUSTAINABLE!

Every year, laboratories produce 5.5 million tonnes of  waste. Our proprietary cleaning systems draw plasma from the ambient air to not just wash away contaminants, but destroy them at a molecular level. This allows organizations to re-use plastics once thought to only be viable for single-use.

Outside of the cost savings related to procurement, shipping, and disposal costs, the re-use of pipette tips and microplates can significantly reduce a lab’s carbon footprint and impact on the climate.

How would using our pipette tip and microplate cleaning systems affect your lab’s environmental impact?

We posed the same question to Zühlke, a leading global environmental/sustainability consultancy, who conducted a comprehensive life cycle assessment for the PureTIP Liquid Handler Companion and PurePLATE MCS. The procedure for calculating the ecological footprint is based on the standard ISO 14040. Want to see the results?

 

Request a Custom Plate Cleaning LCA
Request A Custom Pipette Tip Cleaning LCA

PurePLATE Re-use

Our beta testing partners found no limit to the number of re-uses for microplates cleaned by our PurePlate MCS and PurePLATE Max cleaning systems.

PureTIP Re-use

The PureTIP Liquid Handler Companion and the PureTIP Plus Standalone System allow organizations to reuse filtered and non-filtered pipette tips and pin tools that are usually single-use plastics. 

Waste

Plasma Pipette Tip cleaning generates no solid or liquid waste, while Plasma Microplate Cleaning uses a rinse and plasma process.

Greenhouse Gas Impact

Every PurePLATE MCS has the potential to prevent CO2 from entering the atmosphere. For every 200 to 225 standard microplates that are reused per day, an organization’s carbon footprint can be reduced by about 10 metric tons per year. 

What is a Life Cycle Assesment?

A Life Cycle Assessment is a widely accepted way to determine a product’s impact on the environment from when the raw materials are required to manufacture the product are extracted to when the product is either disposed of or recycled. This comprehensive report gives consumers a fully transparent view of the impact the purchase will have on the planet via greenhouse gases or other forms of pollution.