ZAP DAY IN THE GREEN LAB
This was a big day for the lab. Basically we needed to completely clean the lab of RNases by using this RNase Zap product. The best part of the day was getting the entire lab, (me and the computer peons) to work together and get the lab ready to start experiments. The hardest part of the day was seeing all of the paper towels it took to accomplish this task. Step one was an ETOH wipe down... a few paper towels for this. Then the Zap, which needed to be scrubbed using a paper towel... a few more here. Then a rinse step with a wet paper towel, and last step was the final wipe down with a dry towel. So for each lab bench, each shelf in the freezers, fridges, and storage drawers, there was a significant amount of trash. The way I had to look at it was this: If I did not fully get the lab clean, there would be potential RNase's floating around that could contaminate any samples. If this were to happen, then I would have to go through many trouble shooting repeats of the experiment to figure out where the contamination came from. In essence, even more waste of lab materials. In the end, I did find out that the paper towels we were using did contain some post consumer waste, so there was some greenness to this Zap Day.
The event ended with an outside veggie only pizza party, thanks to TheBOSS!!
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