Question about autoclave wastes and serological pipette - (Apr/13/2011 )

Just a thought for you and your supervisor to consider also- reusable pipettes will not neccessarily save you money, as cleaning them is not only labour intensive, but you will need to purchase cleaning solutions etc. Also, if you don't clean them properly and get contamination, the cost of repeating your work will far outweigh any savings you may have made....

leelee on Mon Apr 18 03:49:10 2011 said:

a good lab dishwasher should have a special rack for glass pipettes... (at least our machine has it )

True, but they need to be properly decontaminated first and then washed, then dried, replugged and sterilised so you are looking at a couple of hours minimum. Not to mention the amount of water used.

leelee on Tue Apr 19 06:55:10 2011 said:

The machine is allready on.. you dont turn the washer on for those pipettes alone.

The drying is the same, you dry it with other stuff.
The replugging can indeed take some time, but not too long normally.
The sterilizing: also like the washing: you sterilize it with other equipment.

So the water/energy used to sterilize them is not more (not a lot).
The time to handle it: I dont know if it would make such a big difference...
(off course the washing etc takes time, but I am assuming you have more then just 1 "batch" of pipettes so you dont need to wait for them to be washed)


+ you forget something: the ones that are made (if you had new ones each time) they cost water/energy and a lot more then when you re-use them.

A lot of the products we use are made as trow away products while it often shouldnt.