How to reduce your plastic consumption and save money with Pipette Tips

From the academic labs, manufacturing, quality and research, pipette tips are one of the most versatile pieces of laboratory equipment. Pipette tips have their advantages, they are cheap, versatile, accurate and prevent contamination. There are a Pipette Tips for Sale and with supply chain issues beginning to ease, they are becoming more widely available.

Unfortunately, pipette tips can make up large amounts of laboratory waste. How can we reduce our plastic consumption?

For quality and cross-contamination purposes, there is a strong need for pipette tips to be single use but if you want to reduce the amount of plastic consumed in your laboratory, one effective way is to save on racks. The plastic racks that hold pipette tips are made of more durable plastics than the pipette tips and can be reused because they do not directly touch any laboratory samples. If sterility is not vital, you can purchase bagged pipette tips and reload pipette racks manually. If you are time-poor, there are also options available to purchase reloading racks, which come with pre-loaded pipettes without the hard casing.

Part of ISO, NATA and GLP/GMP standards is that everything used in the lab is fit for purpose, so why should your pipette tips be any different? Here are the 5 most common types of pipette tips:

• Standard tips – these are ones found in most laboratory settings and excellent for training students. There is an increasing demand for low retention tips.
• Low Retention Tips – these tips have an inner surface specially developed to keep sample binding to a minimum and accurate graduation. This ensures maximum recovery of the sample and high accuracy.
• Extended length – These pipette tips hold the same capacity as standard tips but have a longer length, allowing you to sample from the bottom of test tubes, reagent bottles without touching the shaft of the pipette against other vessels and prevent contamination.
• Filter Tips – These tips are best for when assays are sensitive to cross-contamination. Filter tips are designed to prevent aerosols from contaminating the pipette cone and causing extensive damage to pipettes. Highly Recommended for forensic studies and PCR.
• Gel-Loading Tips – Standard tips can damage SLS and agarose gels. Longer, round tips allow fast and accurate loading into gel electrophoresis samples.

Remember, pipette tips come in various sizes from 10ul to 10ml. If you want to reduce your laboratories plastic footprint, one of the best things you can do is purchase the size that best fits your needs. Make sure the pipette tips you are ordering match the size of your pipette or they are useless and can produce inaccurate results.

Accurate pipetting techniques take a lot of practice. Ensure your staff are fully trained and experienced in pipetting to reduce the amount of errors they make and therefore reduce the number of ‘wasted’ pipette tips.

For more tips to improve your pipetting technique, check out our other blogs.

When pipette tips are ordered in bulk, they come with less unnecessary packaging, which in turn also saves money.

Did you know there are some pipette tips available that are autoclavable? You can reduce your waste with these reusable tips if sterility isn’t one of your core needs.

All Westlab scientific pipette tips are made out of medical-grade virgin polypropylene. Our tips are free from bioactive additives and softening agents such as biocides, slip and antistatic agents. Our tips are also free from DNase, RNase, Human DNA, Pryogen and PCR inhibitor to ensure your results are accurate.

Talk to a Laboratory Supplies Brisbane consultant who can recommend you one of our wide range of pipette tips to best suit your needs. Contact us today.