It's not easy being green...

At least not in a research lab!

I was at work today (a lab at the hospital) doing a DNA extraction when i started to think about all of the waste i was making... all for tiny bits of DNA!

Throughout the 3 hour period i was there starting the extraction for 29 samples, i created the following waste:

• 120+ disposable bulb pipettes
• 12+ plastic bags (that the pipettes came in, 10 per bag)
• 120+ ml of chemical waste (Ethanol and CitriSolve)
• 30 + pipette tips
• 3 pairs of nitrile gloves

and that was only the first day of the extraction! Tomorrow will involve many more pipette tips, chemical solutions, tubes, capillaries, etc...

(btw, i didn't count, i just know using basic math and knowledge of the procedure, haha)

But what can you do? It all has to be sterilized and you don't want to cross contaminate your samples.  

Let's just hope the DNA is being used for something good that will out weigh all the biohazard material it's leaving behind.