Milli-Q® IQ Water Purification Systems Voted Sustainable Lab Product of the Year by SelectScience® Readers

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 lamps
• A reverse osmosis recovery loop that optimizes water recovery and reduces water consumption
• A smaller product size overall due to the use of innovative ion-exchange media, which reduces the system’s footprint, plastic use, and packaging waste
• In 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.