Green Chemistry and Green Biologics

Chemical resources are required to complete most, if not all laboratory research projects. Almost all labs have one or multiple shelves of chemicals specific to each lab’s fields of work. Using the information available from My Green Lab®, this simple three step guide can help to inform environmentally conscious decisions when approaching “Green Chemistry.”

 

Safer chemical alternatives

It is no secret that laboratories use lots of harsh chemicals for their research. From DMSO to Benzene, Xylene, and many others, many chemicals can have various detrimental health hazard effects if not handled properly. Similarly, if the chemical is dangerous to you, it is dangerous to the environment. Hazardous chemicals must be processed separately using established hazardous waste disposal protocols to ensure compliance with regulations and so that these harsh chemicals are not a danger to humans, animals, or the environment. Finding alternatives to the use of hazardous chemicals helps reduce the cost and risk of research, and many safer, more environmentally conscious alternatives are currently available.

 

Available chemical alternatives are evaluated to determine if they have similar efficacyto standard, more hazardous chemicals and also provide more safety to personnel and the environment. For some chemicals, there are multiple alternatives available. The best part of using many chemical alternatives is that most do notrequire hazardous waste disposal. Additionally, some alternativesare cheaper than the original chemical. An example of a “greener” alternative is GeliteTM as an alternative to Ethidium Bromide. Research has shown that Gelite™ is exponentially safer than the mutagen Ethidium Bromide, can be disposed of down the drain, stains DNA brighter, and is much cheaper in cost per unit (ATT BIoquest 2021). This is one of many chemical alternatives that can be found in the available greener chemical guides.

 

As a best practice, researchers should investigate potential greener chemical alternatives to any hazardous chemicals currently being used in their laboratory. If available, the alternative(s) can be tested for efficacy compared to current protocols to allow confidence in making changes moving forward.

 

Practice Microchemistry

The term ‘Microchemistry,’ coined by My Green Lab®, means using the smallest effective reaction sizes when performing experiments. This can look like using the smallest number of wells for an experiment, the smallest volume, or even just reducing the amounts of repeated wells when possible. Practicing microchemistry strategically in your lab can reduce the amount of chemicals ordered and used. Below are steps you can take when implementing microchemistry in your lab practices:

  • When optimizing or trying a new protocol, order small or sample sizes of reagents if possible. Some companies allow free or reduced cost sample sizes of different chemicals, which can save money and reduce waste of purchased chemicals if they do not work for their intended purpose.
  • Use only the number of reactions needed and cut out unnecessary reactions. It is common when seeing if something is working to add additional reactions to an experiment or to have extra ‘just in case.’ When implementing the practice of microchemistry, removing unnecessary reactions can help to reduce the amount of chemicals required and can make smaller volumes/amounts last longer.
  • Reduce reaction volumes. Reaction volumes for an experiment can sometimes be optimized to allow use of smaller volumes without impacting outcomes. Assess experimental protocols to determine whether or not the volume of a chemical/reagent can be reduced (at the same concentration) to allow use of smaller amounts to get the same results.

 

Greener Chemical Waste Management

It is extremely important to properly manage Hazardous Waste, but it requires specialty training, attention to detail, additional cost and resources, and can have serious consequences to personal health and the environmental as well as legal consequences if done incorrectly. With the implementation of green alternatives and microchemistry, the amount of hazardous waste can be greatly reduced and possibly entirely eliminated in some laboratories.

To help researchers identify chemical and laboratory product environmental impact factors, My Green Lab® has developed Environmental Impact Factor Labels for accountability, consistency, and transparency (ACT; Figure 1).

Figure 1. Image of the My Green Lab Environmental Impact Factor Label. Label includes standardized environmental impact scores from 1-10. For more information on these labels and how to implement them into your lab, visit this hyperlink to My Green Lab®.

The ACT label is a comprehensive guide to the environmental impact of the life of a product from when it is made to when it is disposed of, including energy, water, pollution, renewable energy use, and more. ACT labels can help inform researchers of the environmental impact of the chemicals and products they buy and use, and My Green Lab® has created a continually expanding resource database with ACT labels and additional product information that can be accessed without charge by researchers (https://actdatabase.mygreenlab.org/)

 

Overall, implementing Green Chemistry practices in laboratories can reduce the environmental impact of laboratory chemicals, save money, and reduce risks associated with use of hazardous chemicals.

 

Green Biologics

While the area of Green Biologics is perhaps not as well-researched and developed as the area of Green Chemistry, there are still many changes that can be made to typical lab practices to move toward more sustainable biologics and biological reagents, and a few such potential changes are discussed further below.

 

One relatively simple yet potentially effective way to increase sustainability in a research lab is to order lyophilized products (such as lyophilized DNA or powdered media) whenever possible, which can aid in reducing shipping waste. Lyophilized products are generally more stable than their reconstituted counterparts, which means they can be shipped at ambient temperatures and do not require the use of EPS or Styrofoam containers or cold packs, all of which can be challenging to dispose of and can contribute to landfill waste. They also generally require a physically smaller container which translates into less packaging needed during shipping. In addition, when reconstituting these types of products, a glass container can be used, which reduces the need for single-use plastics.

 

Another change to lab practices that could fall under the area of Green Biologics and improve sustainability is to opt, when feasible and reasonable, for smaller animal studies or for alternatives to using animals for research. Breeding and housing animals, such as mice or guinea pigs, can require several resources, and animals are often eventually euthanized and discarded following a study, contributing to landfill waste. Minimizing the number of animals needed for a study or using alternatives, when possible, can lessen these impacts. For example, using in vitro methods such as cell or tissue culture or in silico methods such as computer models can reduce the need for housing and discarding of research animals (NIEHS, 2022).

 

There are a growing number of alternatives being investigated for Fetal Bovine Serum (FBS). FBS is a growth supplement often used in cell and tissue cultures for its richness of growth factors and other components such as proteins and metabolites. However, both demand and cost for FBS have been rising, and there are various issues associated with its use such as batch variability, ethical concerns, immunoreactivity, and contamination. A number of serum-free alternatives have been developed to replace FBS and thereby standardize cell culture protocols, and there are cell types which can be grown in serum-free media (Subbiahanadar et al., 2021). These alternatives may not be suitable for all projects and require optimization, but it is important to recognize that alternatives exist and continue to be developed and should be considered when attempting to improve sustainability in research practices.

 

Another potential opportunity to implement a sustainable biologic alternative is to use artificial blood to feed mosquito colonies used for research, in place of vertebrate blood. Using vertebrate blood, as with FBS, has raised ethical concerns since it is derived from animals.  It also has a very short shelf life (typically around two weeks), which means that any blood that goes unused for an extended period of time will be wasted.  Artificial blood alternatives, such as SkitoSnack, developed by Gonzales et al., can serve the same purpose as vertebrate blood and provide mosquitoes or other blood-feeding insects used in research settings with the necessary components for survival and reproduction. Artificial blood options also have longer shelf lives than vertebrate blood, which means there is likely to be less waste (Gonzales et al., 2018).

 

There are numerous other ways to implement more sustainable biologics into research settings, beyond the ones discussed above. Ultimately, each lab and researcher should consider their projects and practices and evaluate how they can reduce the use of a biologic or opt for more sustainable alternatives that are less hazardous, less resource-intensive, or less wasteful than their current reagents and biologics. There is not necessarily a universal way for all labs to engage in Green Chemistry and Green Biologics, as each lab conducts different research and will therefore have unique needs and capabilities. However, for both Green Chemistry and Biologics, when it is time to order new products, it is useful to look for and consider products that are labeled as environmentally friendly alternatives (for example, ThermoFisher Scientific labels their eco-friendly alternatives with a green leaf symbol). In addition, looking for ACT labels, which provide information about a product’s environmental impact, can help you make more informed purchasing decisions and opt for more sustainable products when possible. It is important to try to implement sustainable changes where feasible, because even minor changes can have significant impacts and can inspire more sustainable practices in other researchers and in other areas.

 

Authors: Dev Aldaz and Kimberly Shelton

 

References:

  1. ATT Bequest . (n.d.). Gelite Safe DNA Stain . AAT Bioquest. from https://www.aatbio.com/products/gelite-safe-dna-gel-stain-10-000x-dmso-solution?unit=17704
  2. Gonzales, K. K., Rodriguez, S. D., Chung, H. N., Kowalski, M., Vulcan, J., Moore, E. L., Li, Y., Willette, S. M., Kandel, Y., Van Voorhies, W. A., Holguin, F. O., Hanley, K. A., & Hansen, I. A. (2018). The Effect of SkitoSnack, an Artificial Blood Meal Replacement, on Aedes aegypti Life History Traits and Gut Microbiota. Scientific Reports, 8(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-29415-5
  3. My Green Lab . (n.d.). ACT Database. ACT Database – My Green Lab. From https://actdatabase.mygreenlab.org/
  4. Green Chemistry. My Green Lab. (n.d.). from https://www.mygreenlab.org/green-chemistry3.html
  5. My Green Lab. (n.d.). Introducing ACT : Transforming The Lab Product Market Through Sustainability. ACT – My Green Lab.  from https://act.mygreenlab.org/
  6. NIEHS. (2022, February 9). Alternatives to Animal Testing. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. Retrieved November 17, 2022, from https://www.niehs.nih.gov/health/topics/science/sya-iccvam/index.cfm
  7. Subbiahanadar Chelladurai, K., Selvan Christyraj, J. D., Rajagopalan, K., Yesudhason, B. V., Venkatachalam, S., Mohan, M., Chellathurai Vasantha, N., & Selvan Christyraj, J. R. S. (2021). Alternative to FBS in animal cell culture – An overview and future perspective. Heliyon, 7(8), e07686. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2021.e07686

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CVMBS Green Labs Resource Guide Copyright © 2022 by MIP 700 FA 2022 Green Labs Class. All Rights Reserved.

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