Search
Applying the 12 principles of green chemistry
We seek opportunities to align with the 12 Principles of Green Chemistry for our chemical and reagent products, driving improvements and adding more sustainable solutions to our product offering. Applying the principles of green chemistry can help reduce the use of hazardous substances, minimize waste, improve resource efficiency, and support product innovation. These approaches can also help address evolving regulatory requirements and customer sustainability objectives.
Use of renewable feedstocks
With biobased Sustain solutions, we incorporate renewable feedstocks while maintaining quality and performance requirements.
Design for energy efficiency
Reducing energy use in the laboratory is an important part of reducing an organization’s environmental footprint. Energy efficient equipment and instruments are one solution to reduce energy, but in addition, selecting and using reagents that have less temperature regulation requirements can reduce energy use in the lab from cold storage and shorter reaction times.
To give you confidence in your cell cultures, the Gibco, Thermo Scientific Nunc, and Invitrogen cell culture products keep your cells healthy while helping to reduce your lab energy use associated with storage requirements. Ambient storage products such as BenchStable cell culture media and TrypLE cell dissociation enzymes, reduce energy use and help free up valuable cold storage space. Our cell culture greener products can also help by minimizing the use of hazardous chemicals and minimizing waste and material consumption. Explore cell culture reagents, instrumentation, and analytical tools throughout the cell culture workflow to support your sustainability goals.
Designing safer chemicals
We are adding product solutions to our offering that are inherently less hazardous, by reducing the use of chemicals of concern or substituting them with less hazardous alternatives. With a focus on innovation, we explore options for designing safer products that also meet quality and performance needs.
Invitrogen DynaGreen magnetic bead products enable high-performance immunoprecipitation (IP) workflows. By applying the 12 Principles of Green Chemistry during design, they offer a more efficient way to reproducibly isolate target proteins in a simple workflow that is free of microplastics while reducing material use and packaging.
SafeCount Cell Viability Stain provides a non-toxic alternative to traditional Trypan Blue staining for cell counting applications. As a membrane integrity dye, SafeCount stain functions identically to Trypan Blue as a membrane integrity exclusion dye while minimizing the associated safety and handling concerns that have long plagued laboratory workflows.
Waste prevention
We pursue holistic solutions that combine the benefits of preventing waste, using less hazardous chemicals with a simpler, more efficient experiment workflow – saving time and conserving resources.
Invitrogen Cells-to-CT products include reagents and enzyme mixtures that provide a comprehensive workflow for real-time quantitative PCR (RT-qPCR) performed directly from the lysates of cultured cells without the need for a separate RNA isolation step. Compared to traditional column-based RNA purification methods, Cells-to-CT kits generate significantly less plastic waste and do not require the use of hazardous reagents.
ACT Ecolabel
The ACT Ecolabel is now available for many chemicals and reagents, including:
- Chromatography solvents
- UHPLC-MS, LC-MS, and HPLC grade solvents
- High-purity formulations
Sustainability insights
Green Chemistry: Designing for a Sustainable Future
In this episode of the Science With a Twist podcast, our host Vinod Mirchandani welcomes John Warner, the co-founder, president, and CTO of the Warner-Babcock Institute for Green Chemistry, and co-founder of the non-profit, Beyond Benign. They talk about the role of green chemistry in sustainability, the importance of education, and why we need the right tools to build a world where the chemical building blocks of products used every day are healthier and safer for humans and the environment.
Choosing greener products - look for the leaf
For customers seeking greener products, Thermo Fisher has created an easy identification system with our green leaf symbol. When you see the green leaf symbol on one of our products, it means that product has one or more select third-party ecolabels and meets our environmental sustainability criteria.
Learn more about the third-party ecolabels we use with our products
