Hello Joanne

You can reuse glass pipettes for cell culture work provided after single use you collect them in a bucket or any container that already contains detergent mixed in water. Keep them immersed for a few hours and then throughly wash them in water. Dry the washed glass pipettes in the oven and after complete dry put them in the canister with cotton plug at the top end of each glass pipette. Use fresh cotton plug each time. Each canister roughly holds about 10-15 pipettes. Send the canister containing the pipettes for autoclaving.

After autoclaving keep the canister in the oven to dry as the canister may be wet from outside as well as inside. After complete drying you can open the canister in the biosafety cabinet for cell culture work.

There are no chances of contamination using autoclaved glass pipettes provided protocols are followed.

It is a good way of reducing plastic waste. Thanks.

All the best.

Regards.

Fantastic, thanks Malcom! :D

Hi Joanne Falck

Here in Brazil is very common... In my career, I worked on the labs that use glass pipettes and glass Pasteur for the cell culture. It is possible! But you should be doubled care, specially on wash to eliminate completely any residues of sodium hypochlorite used for decontamination and detergent used for wash (use preferentially dextran 2 - 5%) and rinse of thoroughly with desmineralizated water or deionizaded. Besides, after the autoclaving is very important dry completely to prevent focus of contaminations. The cotton is interesting to use for prevent contamination, as well as in comercial plastic pipettes.

Hope this helps

Regards

super, thank you!

Hello Joanne Falck

Your glass pipette can be reclaim for cell culture work by proper sterilization technique ( presoaking the glassware in 5% sodium hypochlorite solution overnight thereafter wash under running tap water). This can be further autoclaved with pipette plug with cotton wool thereafter dry completely in hot air oven before use.

Thanks

All the best

Better for you to give a read for sterilizarion processes for reviewing and refreshing with current updates. Maybe you can also reuse some more lab material after properly disinfect and sterilize them.

5% hypo is one way, you may get few kore important tips,

Advice from me do not go for shortcuts because tou are going to setup a new laboratory.

I have the same question too! From the google research I have done, autoclaving and manually adding the cotton plugs into the serological pipettes is the way to go. My colleagues mentioned that this is a labor intensive approach to achieving sterility and conserving resources and minimizing single use plastic waste but it is possible.