Ambient Shipping for Antibodies: An End to Cold-Chain Hassles

In labs around the world, many supplies arrive through a cold-chain process, packed with foam coolers, gel packs, and other materials designed to maintain specific temperatures.

While required to preserve certain sensitive products, these methods are resource-intensive, contributing to high energy use, increased carbon emissions, and a significant amount of non-recyclable waste.

Expanded polystyrene (EPS) is one notoriously hard-to-recycle material key to cold-chain shipping – and more than 10 million metric tons of it is produced globally every year. Recognising this impact, Thermo Fisher Scientific has investigated and opted to prioritise ambient shipping wherever possible. Through rigorous temperature stability testing, including broad immunoassay validation, Thermo Fisher has demonstrated that many of their antibody products shipped at ambient temperature perform identically to those shipped with cold-chain conditions and maintain long-term stability.

What is ambient shipping?

Ambient shipping is the transportation of goods, particularly sensitive items like pharmaceuticals, chemicals, and biological samples, at room temperature or within a controlled temperature range that mimics typical indoor conditions, usually between 15°C and 25°C.

Ambient shipping has gained popularity for several reasons over the last few years mainly to reduce costs, simplify logistics, positive impact on the environment and to maintain product integrity. In contrast, cold shipping requires refrigeration or freezing during transit to maintain the integrity of the products.

What are the key sustainability benefits?

Let’s dive deeper into some of the key benefits from the lens of sustainability:

• Lower emissions: Shipping products at ambient temperatures reduces the energy demand typically associated with cold-chain transport.
• Fewer cold packs and foam coolers: Switching to ambient shipping significantly cuts down on these materials, enabling laboratories to dispose of less waste while simplifying recycling practices.
• Easily recyclable packaging materials: Shipped products are packaged in 100% kerbside-recyclable paper packaging, which minimises environmental impact while aligning with lab recycling programs.

What are the indirect benefits?

While reducing packaging waste is a clear and measurable benefit in the lab, the indirect environmental advantages – although harder to quantify – are equally impactful.

Ambient shipping requires less energy for temperature control during transport, leading to reduced energy consumption. This decrease in energy use translates to lower greenhouse gas emissions, making the switch in our shipping process more environmentally friendly from end-to-end.

Choosing suppliers that are invested in reducing the overall environmental impact of products in various ways, from how and where they are made to how they are shipped, can play a part in any lab’s sustainability journey. Ambient shipping is just one of the small, targeted changes that can cumulate in lasting, positive environmental outcomes for labs.

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