Sustainability Scientists’ Choice Awards winners announced
Instruments from Agilent Technologies recognized as having made an impact on laboratory sustainability
2 Apr 2024
Scientists worldwide have been voting in the Sustainability categories of the 2023 Scientists’ Choice Awards®.
This year, in response to the critical importance of sustainability in our ever-growing world, we have taken significant strides to expand the category dedicated to recognizing laboratory products or services that actively contribute to reducing the environmental footprint of scientific research. Introducing a pioneering new award, we asked scientists to nominate laboratories at the forefront of sustainable initiatives.
The Scientists’ Choice Awards are unique in the industry as they are chosen by scientists and healthcare professionals. Each year, we invite scientists around the globe to participate by nominating, reviewing, and voting for the lab products that have had the greatest impact on their work.
Read on to learn more about this year’s winners and nominees to discover how they are shaping a more eco-conscious future for laboratory research.
Sustainable Product of the Year
The award for Sustainable Product of the Year in the reducing consumables and reagents category goes to the Cary 3500 Flexible UV-Vis Spectrophotometer by Agilent Technologies.
The Cary 3500 Flexible UV-Vis is a double beam spectrophotometer with superior photometric performance — for challenging measurements with minimal sample preparation — that can be deployed in regulated environments. The system offers a unique large sample compartment with small footprint for analyzing liquid samples that require long pathlength cuvettes, as well as characterizing solid samples..
The runners-up are:
- HALO® 1.5 mm ID AQ-C18 column by Advanced Materials Technology
- DxH concentrated ECO diluent by Beckman Coulter
- EchoLUTION Tissue DNA Kit by BioEcho Life Sciences GmbH
- Mastercycler X40 – PCR Thermal Cycler® by Eppendorf
- Thermo Scientific™ TSG Series Glass Door Refrigerators by Thermo Fisher Scientific
- MassTrak ACQUITY UPLC I-Class PLUS /Xevo TQ Absolute IVD System by Waters™
Sustainable Supplier of the Year
The award for Sustainable Supplier of the Year goes to Agilent Technologies.
Agilent Technologies supports scientists in cutting-edge life science research; patient diagnostics; and testing required to ensure the safety of water, food and pharmaceuticals. In 2021, Agilent announced its commitment to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions no later than 2050, already implementing environmentally conscious product design as a central feature of the business. Agilent has engineered its instruments to improve sustainability in a holistic way — from product design and manufacturing to usage and disposal.
The runners-up are:
Sustainable Laboratory of the Year
The award for Sustainable Laboratory of the Year goes to the Atsumi Lab, Chemistry Department, University of California Davis.
To combat waste on campus, the Atsumi lab spearheaded an initiative across UC Davis Chemistry, Plant Pathology, and Biomedical Engineering departments to recycle empty pipette tip boxes into new, plastic lab consumables by partnering with the company Polycarbin. This project, funded by the UC Davis Green Initiative Fund who supply 1-year grants to help students start sustainability projects on campus, involved purchasing and distributing Polycarbin AlphaCarbin recycling receptacles across eight participating labs, and coordinating the collection and return of filled receptacles to Polycarbin. Since April 2023, the lab has managed to recycle 199 kg of plastic, which have been recycled by Polycarbin into new pipette tips, pipette tip boxes, microcentrifuge tubes, and conical tubes for the Atsumi Lab to purchase and use. This small-scale recycling initiative has led to talks with the UC Davis Office of Sustainability on how to expand the program across campus for both research and teaching labs.
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