Product Stewardship
Life Technologies strives to continuously minimize the health effects, safety and environmental impacts of our products, processes and services through our Product Stewardship program. We are going beyond compliance, incorporating Design-for-Environment principles through the product lifecycle, from ideation to end-of-life.
Our Product Stewardship program is divided into three sections:
Design for Environment (DfE) - Innovative techniques and strategies that minimize environmental impact of products and processes by using less hazardous materials and packaging, resulting in less pollution and less waste.
Product Safety - addresses health and safety concerns not mitigated by DfE initiatives. Hazards of Life Technologies products are communicated through labeling and product literature. Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDSs) are generated in multiple languages.
Product Compliance - ensures that our products and materials can be sold and distributed globally, meeting chemical control laws and international requirements for movement of reagents. All new instruments meet regulations restricting hazardous substances and end-of-life directives.
Life Technologies Achievements
- Increasing productivity
- Reducing costs
- Fostering product and market innovation
- More value with less environmental impact
- Reducing use of toxic substances
- Incorporating sustainable packaging practices
- Implementing instrument take-back programs
Sustainable Packaging
Life Technologies is dedicated to reducing, reusing and recycling materials, as well as reducing waste.
Goal: Increase sustainable packaging by 25%
Reusable Packaging
1. To minimize the environmental impact of the crate that ships our SOLiD™ System genetic analysis instrument, Life Technologies built the crate to be returned to the company. The packaging system is cost-neutral when comparing one-way crate and disposal costs with a returned, refurbished crate.
Right sizing:
2. Coolers for cold shipment were redesigned to remove 30% of polystyrene from our cold-stored product lifecycles. Life Technologies continues to investigate novel means to improve the efficiency of packaging material and decrease the need for refrigerated transport.
Using smaller shipping boxes reduces material consumption, transportation costs and the environmental impact of the transportation system.
Lighter weight Packaging
3. Boxes are being replaced by lightweight foil packaging. This reduces material usage by 87%, lowers transport costs and reduces disposal impact.
New packaging for the Invitrogen UltraPure Agarose product line eliminated 75% of the plastic used in previous packaging.
Green Chemistry
Life Technology embraces chemistry as an environmental solution through eliminating the use or generation of hazardous substances in the design, manufacture and application of chemical products.
Goal: Apply green chemistry principles to decrease dangerous goods transportation by 25%
Examples of Life Technologies’ application of green chemistry principles include:
- Reformulating the Purelink™ Quick Gel Extraction Kit, making it non-hazardous for transport.
- Introducing the SYBR® Safe DNA Gel Stain as a non-toxic, non-mutagenic alternative to ethidium bromide (a chemical agent that changes the genetic material).
- Offering SimplyBlue™ SafeStain for protein research, which is non-flammable, non-toxic and non-corrosive. The competing product is corrosive and must be used with flammable and toxic solvents.
Purelink™
Quick Gel Extraction Kit
SYBR®
Safe DNA Gel Stain
Simply Blue™
SafeStain for Protein Research
