Waters Corporation has become the first vendor to obtain the ACT™ Ecolabel Certification for 42 of its liquid chromatography columns, marking a significant milestone in environmental validation for the company’s manufacturing, usage, packaging, and disposal practices.
The ACT Environmental Impact Factor label assists scientists and procurement professionals in selecting sustainable lab products with ease. Waters supplies its columns to tens of thousands of laboratories worldwide, spanning life, materials, food, and environmental sciences, serving as critical tools for scientists, quality assurance experts, and analytical chemists.
At the 72nd ASMS Conference on Mass Spectrometry and Allied Topics, Waters Corporation (NYSE: WAT) announced that over 40 products in its liquid chromatography (LC) chemistry portfolio have received ACT Ecolabels from My Green Lab, a nonprofit organization devoted to fostering a global culture of sustainability in science. For over 50 years, Waters has established a renowned reputation as a single-source manufacturer of LC column chemistries, excelling in stationary phase synthesis, column hardware fabrication, and column packing.
“Sustainability is increasingly integral to our customers’ decision-making processes. Certifying Waters columns with ACT Ecolabels enables customers to make environmentally conscious choices without compromising on analytical performance and results,” said Erin Chambers, Vice President, Consumables and Lab Automation, Waters Corporation. “Our longstanding commitment is to help customers find the right chromatography column for their separation challenges. Innovations like MaxPeak™ Premier High-Performance Surfaces and CORTECS™ Solid Core Particles have greatly enhanced robustness and efficiency in analytical laboratories. We take pride in leading the industry as the first vendor to offer ACT Ecolabels for our LC columns.”
Waters provides a diverse range of column options and formats, including HPLC, UHPLC, GPC, SFC, and SEC, all backed by reliable quality manufacturing ensuring consistent, repeatable results.
Waters pioneered ultra-performance liquid chromatography (UPLC) in 2004 with the launch of the ACQUITY™ UPLC™ Column, utilizing sub-2-µm particles for faster separations and significant solvent reductions compared to HPLC. This innovation has saved users an estimated 300 million hours of operational runtime and 27 million liters of mobile phase. Additionally, Waters is enhancing the sustainability of its chromatography columns by redesigning packaging to replace non-recyclable foam inserts with recycled and recyclable plastic and reducing column box sizes by 50%.
The Environmental Impact Factor (EIF) criteria, which underpin the ACT Ecolabel, were developed with input from scientists, sustainability directors, procurement specialists, and manufacturers. By focusing on Accountability, Consistency, and Transparency (ACT) in areas such as manufacturing, energy and water use, packaging, and end-of-life, the ACT label simplifies the selection of sustainable products. Waters ACQUITY and CORTECS Chromatography Columns are the first products to earn the ACT Ecolabel from My Green Lab following a rigorous third-party verification process.
