Our Recent Projects

Pipette Tip Project

We have initiated a project of switching a large research institute to cardboard racked tips at a 20% lower cost than their current supplier which potentially frees up budget to implement recycling of hazardous plastic waste. The anticipated results of this project are a significant reduction in CO2e. Just switching to cardboard racks would save 60% plastic, but with recycling bags included to recycle the plastic insert and pipette tips there is a further saving of 75% CO2e plus a budget saving of around £8k. This budget could then be used to recycle lab plastics including flasks and centrifuge tubes etc. All this data will be captured for their LEAF submission.

Natural Lab Cleaner and Disinfectant Project

Enara Bio in Oxford have ran a thorough test of our Naturama Biocide, an environmentally safe and natural cleaner that has all the required British Standards and is a more sustainable alternative to hazardous lab cleaners. Enara used ATP swabs and analyser to swab lab waste before and after disinfection with Naturama to show it was equivalent or better than their current method. Previously hazardous lab plastic waste can now be collected for recycling and the Naturama is safe to dispose of – the results were so good that Recycle Lab have now adopted it for the SOP. 

You can find more information here

Naturama and Hygieia-San have recently been tested by a leading Welsh research University comparing their disinfecting power compared to common laboratory  cleaning agents and came out on top!

A full case study will be coming soon but the early results show that both natural cleaning agents outperformed the other products even at the 2 hour time frame when the products were used to disinfect tissue culture flasks growing breast cancer cells.  

Waste Reduction Project

We are working with a leading private healthcare provider to implement the UK's first Envomed system which reduces the volume of waste by 80% and reduces the level from clinical to domestic – resulting in a forecasted 67% reduction in the cost of waste removal which gives a pay back on the instrument of just over a year. This would sit perfectly on a University campus, hospital site or science park and have the added benefit of reducing waste collections by 80%, reducing CO2 and congestion on campuses and hospital sites. 

You can find more information here

Consultation Project Example

We are working with an international agency to audit their UK and European sites, the project is yet to start but the plan is to provide a baseline through energy and purchasing data, forecast CO2e savings from the suggested changes and then implement the changes. The real life reductions will be captured to report back on the project – with the ideal situation that the product or process switches also provide a monetary saving which pays for the project, rendering the CO2e savings free! One of the big savings here is generating LN2 on site rather than having daily deliveries.

Biobank Project

This project involves swapping out older, less energy efficient ULTs for the latest generation of ultra low energy models offering a pay back in energy savings. The model involves a finance/lease arrangement to avoid upfront CAPEX, the payments for which is contributed towards by the savings made from lower energy usage. We have also performed an audit of the entire site and provided prices for renewable energy as well as proposals for on-site energy generation (solar / wind).

Cost Effective Recycling Projects

A leading UK Research Institute are predicted to save a whopping 21 tonnes of CO2e by recycling their used tissue culture plastics. The project is at the initial stages but by diverting used flasks, plates, dishes and serological pipettes from incineration and instead into Recycle Lab boxes the Institute will reduce carbon by 74%! Plus some of the cost of the recycling will be covered in the cost of the plastics the buy - making recycling potentially cost neutral!

Equipment Replacement Project

We completed an exercise with a highly regarded UK University focusing on reducing the vast amount of energy used by Ultra Low Temperature Freezers (ULTs). The average ULT uses the same energy as a semi-detached house so is a big target for reducing consumption and cost. The University identified the top 10 most energy hungry units accross the campus by monitoring the energy usage over a set period. An annual energy demand from these units was calculated and sent to Lampadina Scientific. Using our calculators we provided the University with a payback on replacing these units with Haier Biomedical Ultra Eco ULTs which use a staggeringly low 4.16kWH/day. 

The worst offending unit was using over 10,000kwH per year, costing over £3,000 in electricity, which would be reduced to £455 if exchanged to the Ultra Eco = saving of over £2,500 per year. The replacement would therefore pay for itself in under 4 years! Other benefits are of course better sample security due to less risk of failure, the warranty of a new unit, quicker recovery times, less heat output reducing air conditioning energy usage, reduced maintenance costs etc

For the 10 units identified the lifetime (15 years) saving of switching to new units now would be over £240,000 in energy! 

Energy Efficient Equipment Purchasing

When deciding to buy equipment the purchase price shouldn't be the only financial consideration. As energy costs continue to rise the ongoing running cost of the instrument must be accounted for; that's what we did for one customer looking at new incubators. When comparing the Haier Biomedical range of incubators to a competitor brand we found

a huge difference in energy and running costs. The energy difference for normal day to day operation was 500 W per unit. So for the the 2 units they needed to purchase that’s 1kW more per hour and 24kW/day. At an average cost of 25p/kWh that’s and extra £6/day or £2,190/year for these units alone, almost enough to buy another incubator!

Efficient Purchasing Project

We have completed a number of these projects and they are by far the easiest to do – all that is required is 3 – 12 months purchasing data from the customer side and we do the rest. We can look for patterns of purchasing and make reasonable suggestions to bulk purchase which often reduces the cost but also drastically reduces the delivery CO2 – this works well with things like BioBins which are easy to store and don’t expire. The second thing we do is look for easy switches to renewable or plant based alternatives and the final thing is a carbon calculation as to what could be saved by recycling – that way customers can tell if it’s worth implementing BEFORE they do any work.

If you would like to discuss implementing one of the above projects in your lab or our range of sustainable products Contact Us