Could acoustic waves help reduce plastic waste?
Our CEO Dr Luke Cox explores the context behind plastic waste in biotechnology and how we can tackle it with some good vibrations
Have you ever Googled "biotech plastic waste"? If so, you probably stumbled upon countless articles about how we hope biotechnology will save us from plastic waste with fancy new materials or futuristic breakdown methods. While this is exciting, there's a less-discussed issue: the mountain of plastic used within bio labs themselves.
Think about it: every reagent added, every cell moved and every test run relies on countless single-use plastic items – pipette tips, falcon tubes, well plates – most used for mere seconds before disposal. It's a hidden problem, but most researchers know it all too well.
Now it feels like the tide is turning. Cancer Research UK is now requiring eco-friendly practices in labs by 2026 for most of their funding schemes. Other funding bodies are sure to follow suite. AstraZeneca recently awarded one of their CoSolve prizes to novel approaches to reuse or recycle widely used filter tips.
While there are many emerging approaches to reusing and recycling plastic labware, the ideal solution is to use less in the first place. That's where remote manipulation techniques come in. We need ways to move cells and materials without physically touching them, especially for sterile environments. Here's where things get interesting:
Optical tweezers: Amazing Nobel Prize-winning tech, but limited by its small scale and specialized labware – not exactly eco-friendly.
Magnetic fields: Great if your cells are magnetic, less so otherwise.
Electric fields: Fantastic for unleashing some new capabilities, but do we really need more single-use electronics?
Acoustic fields, however, show real promise! Systems like the Echo Liquid handler can already save hundreds of thousands of pipette tips annually. But what if we could push the boundaries further?
Imagine a robot that reaches into your sterile containers and gently manipulates cells (or other objects) using sound waves! This eliminates the need for countless plastic tools. In cell passaging it can potentially reduce your lab's plastic consumption by up to 50%. That’s what we’re developing at Impulsonics. It's just one piece of the puzzle, but a crucial one.
Do you have a plastic intensive processes you’re trying to streamline? Luke would love to chat to you! Please get in touch.
Dr Luke Cox is the CEO & co-founder of Impulsonics
A speaker levitating a petri dish, generated with Microsoft Co-Pilot.