End of the Line: What happens to Lab Equipment when it's retired?

In a previous Greening the Bench post, Do You Really Need That? Reducing Waste Through Equipment Sharing, we looked at how sharing kit between benches stops labs buying three of everything. This time we're at the other end of the story: what happens to an instrument once it has run its last sample.

There are various examples of this in every lab, like the HPLC in the corner with a fault nobody has quite got round to fixing. Or the centrifuge that was replaced two years ago but never left the lab, or maybe even the stirrer plate tucked away in a cupboard with a service sticker from 2014. Retired equipment tends to sit in limbo, quietly occupying floor space until someone arranges for disposal. That last decision is where a surprising amount of carbon, and money, is either recovered or thrown away.

Retired Lab Kit is E-Waste

Electrical and electronic waste is the fastest growing waste stream in the world, and less than a quarter of it is formally collected and recycled. As lab instruments are dense with circuit boards, transformers, motors, pumps and displays, they certainly fit in the WEEE waste category!

Then there is also the embodied carbon to consider, as for many instruments the majority of it's carbon footprint is locked in the moment it is built, from the mining, the machining and the shipping. If you send a working centrifuge to a recycler, it can recover a few kilos of steel and copper but everything else is discarded. By keeping that instrument in use somewhere, the embodied carbon is given a use.

Decommission before you decide

It is important that nothing leaves a lab until it is safe to leave.

A workable decommissioning checklist covers:

• Documented decontamination - A signed certificate covering chemical, biological and radiological status is the first thing that anyone further in the process will ask for.

• Data - Instrument PCs hold sample data, occasionally patient identifiers, and licensed software. Make sure that the drives are cleared properly and record that you did.

• Hazards and consumables - Drain solvent lines, remove batteries, empty waste bottles and flag any refrigerant.

• Paperwork and parts - Service history, manuals, calibration certificates and the original accessories help to move an instrument from scrap to sellable.

Four routes out of the Lab

Once the kit is clean and documented, work down this list in order. It runs from the highest environmental and financial return to the lowest.

🔁 Redeploy internally

Before anything leaves the building, ask around your organisation through a department mailing list, an intranet page, or a photo posted in your green team's channel. Many universities now run equipment swap days or keep an internal reuse portal, for exactly this purpose. So it is worth checking whether your organisation already has one before you start from scratch. The instrument that is surplus in your lab could be the thing that another group has been trying to get funded for two years, so it is definitely worthwhile!

💷 Resell

There are specialist companies set up for exactly this.

• UniGreenScheme collects surplus equipment from labs, resells it, and returns a rebate to the department it came from. Since 2015 they have supported more than 86 universities and returned over £1.8 million in rebates, so the money follows the equipment back to the people who freed up the space.

• Wasteless Bio runs an online marketplace for surplus life science instruments, consumables and reagents, which is particularly useful when a project ends or a lab closes and you're left with unused stock as well as hardware.

🎓 Donate

A working instrument that no longer suits your workflows can be transformative elsewhere. Some programmes redistribute equipment from universities to lower resource settings, local schools and colleges are often glad of a balance microscope or benchtop centrifuge.

♻️ Recycle properly

When something is genuinely beyond use, it is WEEE waste, not general waste. Make sure to use a licensed contractor who will issue a waste transfer note, and ask whether parts will be harvested before shredding. A dead HPLC still contains pumps, valves and a detector lamp housing that could keep another machine running for years.

Design the Exit at the Point of Purchase

The easiest retirements are the ones planned years in advance. When you're buying, ask the supplier if they offer take-back, refurbishment or trade-in at the end-of-life. You can also enquire if spare parts are guaranteed for a set number of years, or even if the software is tied to a licence that dies with the control PC? An instrument that can still be serviced and resold in ten years time is still a better value instrument than one that can't.

It also helps to know what you actually own. Plenty of labs have no single list of equipment, age and condition, which is exactly why items get forgotten. A shared spreadsheet, reviewed once a year, catches things while they still hold value instead of after they've stopped working.

Action of the Week

Walk through your lab and list every piece of equipment that hasn't been used in the last twelve months.

• Note the make, model, rough age and whether it still works.

• Give each item a route: redeploy, resell, donate or recycle.

Conclusion: Nothing should just disappear

Retiring equipment well is not glamorous work and it rarely appears in anyone's objectives. But it's one of the few sustainability actions that reliably returns money alongside carbon: recovered value, reclaimed floor space, and a machine still running somewhere else instead of being shredded.

So next time something goes quiet in the corner of your lab, ask where it's going before you ask who's taking it away. Every small action counts.

Frequently Asked Questions

What should I do before disposing of old lab equipment?

Decommission it first. Decontaminate the instrument and get a signed certificate covering chemical, biological and radiological status, wipe any instrument PC properly, remove batteries, drain solvent lines and empty waste bottles, then gather the service history, manuals, calibration certificates and original accessories. Equipment that arrives clean and documented can be resold or donated. Equipment that doesn't can usually only be scrapped.

Is lab equipment classed as e-waste?

Yes. Electrical and electronic lab instruments fall under WEEE regulations, so they can't go into general waste and must be routed through a licensed contractor who issues a waste transfer note. E-waste is the fastest growing waste stream in the world and less than a quarter of it is formally collected and recycled.

Can I sell or donate used laboratory instruments?

Yes. Specialist resale companies such as UniGreenScheme collect surplus laboratory equipment from universities, research institutes and private labs, resell it and return a rebate to the department it came from, and marketplaces such as Wasteless Bio list surplus life science instruments, consumables and reagents. Many suppliers also operate take-back or trade-in schemes. On the donation side, programmes such place working instruments with universities in low-resource settings, and local schools and colleges often welcome a balance, microscope or benchtop centrifuge.

Does recycling lab equipment actually save carbon?

Recycling recovers materials, but most of an instrument's carbon footprint is embodied in its manufacture. Keeping a working instrument in use, whether redeployed internally, resold or donated, preserves far more of that carbon than shredding it. Recycling is the right answer only once an item is genuinely beyond use, and even then parts harvesting should come first.