This year’s winner of SelectScience®’s Scientists’ Choice Awards in the sustainable product design category are Milli-Q® IQ 7003, 7005, 7010 and 7015 water purification systems from the Life Science Business of Merck KGaA Darmstadt, Germany, which operates in the U.S. and Canada as MilliporeSigma. The Milli-Q® IQ line is a fully integrated water purification system that transforms tap water into pure and ultrapure water to meet the demanding needs of scientists’ lines of work.
The Scientists’ Choice Awards from SelectScience® have invited scientists to review, nominate and vote for the lab products or services that have had the greatest impact on their work for the past 16 years.
The Milli-Q® IQ systems were developed under the company’s proprietary Design for Sustainability (DfS) framework, which holistically embeds sustainability at each stage of the product development process. Each DfS-developed product is recognized with a scorecard, which communicates the product’s sustainability features across seven dimensions of environmental impact: Energy and Emissions, Water, Packaging, Materials, Suppliers and Manufacturing, Circular Economy, and Usability and Innovation.
The Milli-Q® IQ systems are one of the company’s nearly 2,000 greener alternative products, as it helps eliminate toxic substances, save energy and water, and reduce waste. The sustainable features of the Milli-Q® IQ include:
An industry-first completely mercury-free tap-to-ultrapure water system that neutralizes organic contaminants and bacteria using EcH2o® UV lampsA reverse osmosis recovery loop that optimizes water recovery and reduces water consumptionA smaller product size overall due to the use of innovative ion-exchange media, which reduces the system’s footprint, plastic use, and packaging wasteIn addition to requiring less packaging, the product utilizes sustainable packaging materials: the system’s corrugated packaging has sustainable forestry certification, and its protective foam is made of 100% bio-based polyethylene from sugar cane waste.
Learn more about the Milli-Q® IQ Systems and other innovative strategies the company is implementing to help shape the future, supporting brilliant minds to solve global challenges, by visiting its sustainability and social business innovation webpage.
