Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
12
Environmen
tal Concerns
The environment is everything that isn't me.
Albert Einstein
The carbon footprint of disposable technologies is larger than that of the
reusable systems producing more solid waste; however, this must be studied
in the light of the overall impact and not just in isolation.
The solid waste in disposable systems is mainly used plastic components,
from bioreactor bags to connectors to filters. Note that even the stainless steel
industry produces substantial solid waste, which includes plastic waste. The
waste is of two types: one that can be folded and readily compressed and
the other that is hard to compress, such as filter capsules and cartridges. It is
important to understand that the size of solid waste produced in a dispos-
able system reduces as a percentage of total waste as the batch sizes become
larger. This is because some of the basic components are not related to the
size of the batch. A rule of thumb to observe is that the size of solid wastes
is about 10%-12% of the total batch size, so a batch of 5,000 L would produce
waste of about 500 kg.
Disposal of solid waste from manufacturing can be a cumbersome task
if the types of waste are different in terms of biosafety decontamination
requirements. It is important that the components to be discarded be identi-
fied with the hazard before they are put to use.
Biosafety
How waste is handled depends to a large degree on its biosafety status. Since
all disposable components that come in contact with a GMO may have to be
equally treated depending on their biosafety status, a good understanding
of the NIH Guidelines for Research Involving Recombinant DNA Molecules
should be reviewed; the most recent version was issued in January 2011.
Since the bioprocessing industry is concerned mainly about two types of
host cells, animal tissue such as CHO cells and bacterial organisms such as
E. Coli
, there the discussion pertains to both of these selections. An appen-
dix to this chapter provides Appendix K of the NIH Guidelines for future
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