Green Intentions May - Easy-going green lab tips by Estel Collado Camps

Sometimes, life’s so good and easy. Especially in spring! Cheesy or not, we all know that the magic really is in the small things. So sit back, relax, and get ready for some feel-good, easy going, practical green tips. Enjoy!

Tip one: swirl that Erlenmeyer!

If you’re an agarose gel kind of scientist, you may be familiar with that moment. You take your erlenmeyer out of the microwave… straight under a stream of cool tap water. From what we tried at home (I asked all members of the redaction team), in less than 10 seconds 1 L flows from a fully open tap. Imagine yourself placing a little Erlenmeyer into one full litre of freshly tapped water, just to cool it down a bit!

Now imagine yourself swirling that Erlenmeyer in the open air instead. Much better, right?

Tip two: Full professor’s approach to sterile pipettes

Have you ever watched a full professor doing cell culture? I did! I had the honour to be trained by Professor Paul Crocker himself on how to harvest bone marrow cells from a mouse. But among all the complicated moves, one very simple thing caught my attention. Paul did not throw away the pipette every time he pipetted sterile medium. Instead, he left it standing in the media bottle. When he needed media again, he just plugged the pipette boy onto the same pipette. And so on.

Ever since I saw that, when I do cell culture I have a serological pipette into my media bottle, one into my PBS, one into my trypsin. Resuspending cells is the last step: until then, your pipette remains sterile and you can use it for multiple flasks. Give it a try: rethink your pipetting strategies!

Tip three: the extra centimeters

Now let’s revise some very basic behaviours. What is autoclave tape really about? It turns out, when taping a pipette tip box you’ve got two simple goals: preventing opening, and making sure the box was submitted to the right sterilising conditions. What’s more, if you’re sterilising a bottle with a screw cap… then the only objective is colour-checking for the right conditions. Therefore there’s no need to cover the whole neck of the bottle with tape.

Back to the tip box, please ask yourself a serious question. What does the tape all the way across the lid contribute to your objectives? And mind you, why across the long side? Really, all you need is a piece of tape over each of two opposite edges. Done!

Compare using a piece of 12cm (I measured our tip boxes) plus 2 extra cm on each side, against just two pieces of about 4 cm each. That’s 16 m of tape against 8 m of tape for every 100 boxes. In case you haven’t realised yet, longer is not always better.

Tip four: come to the dark side

I know I am not your mother, but please turn off the lights.

Does it sound obvious to you? Experience tells us otherwise. I regret not having counted the many weekends in these four years when I stepped into an empty department… and found all lights were on. The knowledge square, the kitchen, the coffee area, the cell culture room.

The movement sensors and lights that automatically switch off are a worn-off excuse. Many rooms simply do not have that! Neither do the flow cabinets, computers and radios. And please do not worry about possibly not being the last one. I assure you, all your colleagues know how to switch a light on.

How about we make a deal? Every time someone shouts “Aesculaaf!”, go turn off the lights first.

Tip five: good timing!

You will love this tip if you recognise the situation of “shit, I forgot to clean up!”. Get help: use timed switches for water baths, centrifuges, radios, and any equipment that can be safely turned off without special procedures.

But still, turn off the lights, OK?

Remember: Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive

Drop by drop, water can perforate stone. Experiment by experiment, you are contributing to solving a scientific puzzle. Life is complex enough. If doing something simple is better than doing nothing… How could you say no?

(1.00)³⁶⁵ = 1              it’s doing nothing…

(1.01)³⁶⁵ = 37.7        or going for the small changes

Celebrate your small victories, they count!

Written by Estel Collado Camps

Edited by Nina Wubben and Hasan Erkan