Hi all,
I am eager to hear from people who use or are thinking of using the solutions and services from Polycarbin to handle their plastic labware and tip waste. After seeing them at FutureLabs last year, I’ve had some initial discussions with them and have set up clear and color plastic waste bins at our Hamilton training sites.
The solution seems very straightforward! Please provide any feedback and testimonials from your experiences!
Many thanks,
-Eric
This company looks interesting, I guess I would have questions/concerns around…
The amount of plastic waste in labs is horrendous.
Here’s the response from Polycarbin:
Plastic Leaching - Polycarbin has a patented method for remanufacturing high-precision circular economy lab products. This includes washing, purification and material QC in our recycling process prior to manufacturing.
Costs - Polycarbin’s Closed-Loop lab products are cost-competitive. If customers participate in both recycling and low-carbon procurement we can save customers on cost and carbon. Closed-Loop recycling does cost money but is discounted for folks that engage in low-carbon procurement.
Sterility - Polycarbin’s Closed-Loop lab products of Sterile (e-beam), DNase/RNase/Pyrogen free. From a recycling perspective, Polycarbin can manage both clean and infectious rigid plastic material streams to close the loop.
Please feel free to visit the website or contact info@polycarbin.com to answer any questions.
@EricSindelar_Hamilton , did they confirm if they would take conductive tips? I was under the impression that the graphite added to the polypropylene woudl be an issue during recycling. I would be happy to be proven wrong!
Confirmed that they do take conductive tips. It’s not an issue for them.
Awesome, thank you! I’ll look into this with my Sustainability team.
We just set up the AlphaCarbin tip box return product in a limited capacity to see what the experience has been like. We just sent our first three bins of empty tip boxes about a month ago, which apparently amounted to 35 pounds of plastic circularized into new tips and tip boxes.
I didn’t think they could take tips since they might be contaminated with hazardous materials. Do you have to clean or sterilize the tips before putting them in the bin?
See below for their response, but I do recommend reaching out to them directly at info@polycarbin.com to determine other options!
When it comes to the mailback program, they only accept non-infectious, non-haz plastics. Depending on the workflow, tips can be recycled through our Beta Carbin program.
Interesting. Thanks for the tip!
I heard from Polycarbin that they just recently launched a recycling program for all brands and colors of nitrile gloves. See the brochure below:
If anyone else has experiences with their services, please share!
This looks really interesting. Do they operate in the UK?