LoL. Just autoclave them
Shh
Submitted 1 day ago by fossilesque@mander.xyz to science_memes@mander.xyz
https://mander.xyz/pictrs/image/5e15b19f-2570-4bb8-ab5a-a8a8cbf561d5.jpeg
Comments
vivalapivo@lemmy.today 54 minutes ago
MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 1 hour ago
Recycling companies who ship bottles to india landfills/sea because recycling too expensive:
Maroon@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
Is my lab the only one with a pipette tip washer? Like seriously, we save SO much money on tips.
My lab in specific reuses tips up to six times before discarding them. It doesn’t seem to affect the accuracy.
Caveat: we only use 1ml (blue) and 200 ul (yellow) tips, so not sure if other fancy brands work this way.
Zwrt@lemmy.sdf.org 1 hour ago
I am just assuming but would this not very dependent on the like of work?
Its probably fine for most things but lets say forensic lab or virus research?
brianary@lemmy.zip 9 hours ago
The straw thing seems like such an inconsequential place to start over things like switching to bar soap and bar shampoo to avoid using so many plastic bottles.
Atomic@sh.itjust.works 1 hour ago
All you need to do is walk on the side of a busy road and look in the ditch to see what people just throw away.
It’s not a lot of shampoo bottles, but tons of plastic cups and accompanied straws.
QuinnyCoded@sh.itjust.works 3 hours ago
bar shampoo gets a no from me, I have a HORRIBLE amount of hair/skin oil (genetic) and if I don’t wash my hair for even 1 day it looks like an absolute mess.
good news is that when I’m older I’ll have absolutely glorious hair though lol
Gloomy@mander.xyz 2 hours ago
I use bar shampoo and body wash. Daily, because i sweat a lot (genetics too).
I use bar stuff because i have to shower daily. It prevents so much waste, because i work through soap fast, so at least i am not producing plastic waste.
If you have to wash your hair a lot, thats an argument for bar shampoo, not against.
A_Chilean_Cyborg@feddit.cl 6 hours ago
Nooooooooo please oh no, pleasee, you can’t make me use bar soap please noo.
I seriously hate it, maybe saving the planet is not worth it after all /j…= but also those bottles are refillable while straws are not only single use but are thrown away way more often.
lengau@midwest.social 6 hours ago
You do you. I switched to bar shampoo and I like it so much more!
DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social 9 hours ago
How much shampoo are you going through???
Gloomy@mander.xyz 2 hours ago
Think of it in scale. It’s not just you. It’s millions of people. Even if every household only used one bottle over one year that still would be tons of tons of (easily to avoid) waste. And of course it’s a lot more than one bottle a year.
SARGE@startrek.website 1 day ago
I used to work in a warehouse that made a HUGE deal about the employees using the proper recycling bin so the company can get a nice check from somewhere or other for “going green”
This warehouse recieved thousands of pallets every day.
Each pallet is wrapped with hundreds of square feet of plastic wrap.
Each box is individually wrapped with maybe 10ftsq-50 depending on size.
Each box contains goods in plastic bags. Many of them with plastic clamshell packaging.
The products get unwrapped, and placed in larger boxes on shelves.
When the items get distributed to stores, the items were put in plastic bags, boxed up and wrapped in plastic wrap, boxes placed on pallets that were automatically wrapped by machines in hundreds of square feet of plastic.
None of the plastic from the warehouse floor is separated from the general waste.
Remember, it’s your responsibility to reduce waste.
usualsuspect191@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
I loathe the trend to blame the end consumer for their waste and eliminate very publicly visible things like straws when the vast majority is caused by industry every step of the way. The amount of plastic I see in retail garbage bins is sickening, and the average customer has no clue because it’s all long before anything ends up on the shelf.
Then people stop using plastic cutlery and think they’re helping the planet meanwhile it’s just a facade to keep the real wasters off their radar.
Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works 17 hours ago
Also, I would LOVE to buy stuff not wrapped in plastic, but it doesn’t exist. There are no glass bottles of milk anymore, no soy-butcher
Thorry@feddit.org 1 day ago
I’ve seen the same or even worse. Pallets of stuff would be received, all wrapped up tight in an ungodly amount of plastic. The pallet would be unwrapped, plastic discarded and the contents scanned to confirm the correct items and number of items were present on the pallet. After each item was scanned and it’s serial number recorded, someone would go to validate the items. When validated and found to be correct, the items were again stacked on a pallet and wrapped by another ungodly amount of plastic. The terrible thing was, as I was outside of the distribution chain, I had a view on the bigger picture. Items would often go through several of these places, each doing the exact same. The amounts of plastic each item consumed in the process was huge. But it was necessary, errors were found often, so the steps needed to be done. And the pallets could often get wet, nobody would accept soggy cardboard, so it needed to be wrapped.
The issue is plastic is basically free and extremely good at what it does. A more permanent solution like encasing the goods in some other material, like wood or metal would be more expensive and do a worse job. It’s similar to asbestos, where the solution is so good, nothing else can compete. It took a mighty effort and strict laws to mostly abandon asbestos. I fear humanity has lost its will to live and won’t have it in us to ban single-use plastic.
Some places did use metal trollies instead of pallets, but the pallets were never really a problem. They were almost always made from sustainable woods, be re-used often, till they just about fell apart. After which they were sent out for recycling, either back into a refurbished pallet, or a stamped recycled wood pallet or other recycled wood product.
Resonosity@lemmy.dbzer0.com 15 hours ago
It’d be great if more and more companies packaged their foods through EcoEnclose or similar.
It’d be even better if this was made default by legislation that eliminates the need for good will.
dogs0n@sh.itjust.works 6 hours ago
I recently saw paper straws for sale in a carboard box with a cutout so you could physically touch the straws. Naturally, I was revolted.
bob_lemon@feddit.org 2 hours ago
My headcanon says that this used to have a plastic window instead, until someone pointed out that having a plastic window in packaging of paper straws is ridiculous, so they decided to remove it.
MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 1 hour ago
Biodegradable “plastic” too expensive for that?
Zwrt@lemmy.sdf.org 1 hour ago
There is no way i can imagine such box that makes sense.
People that use single use straws more likely require bulk and large numbers of single use items should never be economically expensive to produce.
In large enough numbers a thin plastic wrap could make sense.
dingus@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I work in healthcare and sometimes I think about the amount of waste I generate in a day and it’s wild
lengau@midwest.social 5 hours ago
Plastic recycling in the home is basically a scam, but at the scale of a hospital where you’re generating large amounts of the same (known) plastic that’s going in its own bin, it’s much easier to recycle. I just bought a bunch of recycled PET that mostly came from medical waste.
LodeMike@lemmy.today 1 day ago
Health of humans is always excluded from plastic reduction laws and for good reason.
Donkter@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Yes, I would rather healthcare and science used 5x as much plastic as they do already and everyone else had to go completely wasteless than try to put any undue limits on them.
philpo@feddit.org 1 day ago
Tbf, I remember the times we reused everything, even tubes.
And it was a mess and there is so much evidence that the whole process of reusing is even worse for the environment.
Zerush@lemmy.ml 21 hours ago
Plastic nowadays is inevitable, but at least the use of biodegradable plastic made from modified natural pulps is growing. Plastic is just a generic term for artificial materials and not all of them are harmful.
Soup@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
Ah, but you must see that recycling costs money! It’s cheaper to pretend you’re recycling and just throw it in the oceans and rivers and landscapes!
I hate it here. We even throw out online returns nearly 100% of the time for all it’s worth, it’s fucking crazy.
Godort@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
Its a matter of scale. If labs went through pipette tips the same way that fast food joints went through plastic straws, they’d be banned too.
Mavytan@feddit.nl 2 hours ago
Some estimates claim that (life) science produces about 2% of worldwide plastic waste even though only 0.1% of the population works in this industry. I’m not sure how accurate these estimates are, but I find them believable considering how much waste I see every day in labs. On the upside, this waste usually stays in contained systems and doesn’t end up in the ocean.
Squirrelsdrivemenuts@lemmy.world 1 day ago
And we don’t throw pipette tips in the ocean, we throw them in the biohazard box. While not better for the environment, at least we don’t choke baby turtles.
FireRetardant@lemmy.world 1 day ago
The lab is a much more controlled environment. I trust a lab tech to dispose of the tips as per protocol, which could reduce the number of tips that end up as litter.
JillyB@beehaw.org 1 day ago
No they wouldn’t. Banning straws is politically expedient, not effective policy. Straws are a tiny drop in the bucket of plastic waste. But they’re visible, largely optional, and have alternatives. It’s easy to make them look bad so a politician can look big by banning them. Your average person can feel like they’re making a difference by buying a reusable straw. The industrial scale plastic waste that happens out of sight is allowed to continue because nobody cares about actually doing anything. Everyone wants to feel like they’re doing something.
Zerush@lemmy.ml 1 day ago
To avoid plastic waste, they use now paper straws …wrapped individualy in plastic. Genius
janus2@lemmy.zip 13 hours ago
PotatoesFall@discuss.tchncs.de 1 day ago
Straws don’t pollute the oceans if you throw them in the trash. Well, unless that trash gets processed badly. Where I live trash gets burned. So I make sure to throw some straws in the river so the sea turtles can do coke off each others backs 😎
SubArcticTundra@lemmy.ml 1 day ago
Good luck choking sea turtles by throwing straws in the river. The only turtles you’ll choke that way are the river turtles
agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
Where do you think the river goes?
Homesnatch@lemmy.world 1 day ago
The river turtles collect the plastic straws and bring them downstream to the sea turtles. Basic nature stuff.
Tuuktuuk@piefed.ee 1 day ago
How about people driving those trucks that directly dump mixed waste into the ocean? That's a very common thing to do in South-East Asia. Plus, there are a zillion villages everywhere around there that dump all of their mixed waste into creeks going through them – to be brought "*away*". Into the oceans.
That's where almost half of all microplastic comes from. Then there's the other approximately half that comes from cars' tyres. And then a part of a percent that comes from drinking straws and such. Hooray.
Ghyste@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
I feel like you might be doing something wrong.
AlmightyDoorman@kbin.earth 1 day ago
Why? Seems like a reasonable amount. In the boxes i used there was place for i believe 80 tips so when i had to pipet something in a 96well plate with multiple components that where not able to be mixed before i sometimes got through multiple boxes in a single session. (And yes i wish i had a digital multi pipet but even then it would not have alwqys been possible to use it.
Ghyste@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
I was joking, honestly. There are both multitip pipettes and experiments requiring a ridiculous amount of separate wells to be filled, both which will make a box disappear.
ryedaft@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
Multi-channel pipette goes brrrrrr
Eheran@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Having to dispense a different volume to every sample goes faaaaack.
Steve@startrek.website 1 day ago
Simple. Don’t throw them in the ocean. Why are you throwing them in the ocean?
bacon_pdp@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Well take the global number of people who do that and multiply it by their average yearly usage and then compare it against the global plastic straw usage in tons.
If it is far lower, it is fine.
If it is close or higher, just advocate for proper recycling/disposal.
foggianism@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
People in America who use pipet tips: probably 10k People who use plastic straws: 300 mil