We work with sterile equipment/surface sterilized arthropods fairly often, and so far the simplest and by far most cost effective approach I have used has been to use 1% sodium hypochlorite (ie, 1% bleach, 99% water). This works fine with commercial bleaches like Clorox, but check the NaOCl content on the labelling as its usually around 15% in commercial solutions. You could use up to a 5% concentration depending on your specific needs, but 1% has always worked fine to eliminate fungi and bacteria.

Thank you for this info! I have typically seen 20% bleach used, I wasn't aware that 1% would be sufficient. Does 1% work to degrade the DNA (so that it won't be picked up when PCR amplified) or only to kill whatever bacteria or fungi might be present on the plastics?

Also, do you do a wash (water or ethanol) after the bleach?

Thank you again for your input.

Not sure entirely what your application is, but 1% probably wont degrade eDNA below detectable limits. A water rinse afterwards will probably help, but I really haven't seen a big difference in sterility from including an ethanol rinse step--and I'd be more worried about this damaging DNA (and plastics or acrylics!), especially if it is at a high concentration (>30% or so).

Thanks again for the input. I'm hoping that eDNA and microbiome (bacterial) DNA will be degraded with whatever sterilization process I use so that each time I sample with the sterilized sampling equipment, there will be no worry about mixing DNA from previous collections with the new collections.

Thanks for your help.