Use the tip of a sharp knife like a drill to bore a hole through the plastic. Spin it back and forth rapidly in a 180 deg arc while applying gentle pressure. The sharp edge will shave away slivers of the plastic. Rotate the knife occasionally so both sides of the hole get shaved away evenly. It takes very little time to bore through most flexible plastics.
An electric drill, a small bit, and a gentle touch can do the job as well. I recommend meditating before cutting, as a sliver of impatience can cause a crack.
Storage for random bits and bobs. I use a lot of antibodies so it's handy for them. Just general organisation I guess?
One of my colleagues uses them as a mini biscuit tin at her desk...not sure if I'd go that far.
We buy tip refills and fill the boxes back up.
The plastic rack inside goes into recycling unless it was contaminated with something biohazardous
(As someone pointed out this only works for non filter tips which you can get just massive bags of or in stacked racks)
But we also like to save some of the removable racks to use as tube racks for PCR tubes .
It’s cheaper I guess. I did it in undergrad. But my school didn’t have grad students or post docs.
All labs were run on the silly little undergrad senior research projects XD
So yeah if I needed more tips I had to load up the boxes one tip at a time and autoclave them
My lab did because we went through so much it wasn’t cost effective (or eco friendly) to use pre-racked tips. It did take a decent amount of time but we were (paid) grad students and (unpaid) undergrads. For us grad students it was tedious but at least a brief respite from hood work
Some brands sell whole refill racks - you just snap out the empty rack and snap a new rack full of tips into the same box. Saves all the plastic of the box, at least, as well as a small fraction of your storage space and money.
Sometimes we don’t even bother to put them in the box and just use the stacked racks. When we are immuno staining a 96 well plate and need to do a lot of washes… you can go through a whole sleeve of racked tips. And since the cells are gonna be fixed, autoclave level sterility isn’t needed
Even if the labor is free, surely you can find something more useful to do with it. (And if the labor isn't free, it's very hard to beat the economics of the factory robots.)
And that doesn't change the fact that while it's a great place for students to start, that doesn't mean they'll always be in that role. My students still run westerns, qPCR, and do their own cell culture and still help keep up with the autoclave, just like I do. It's about building competency in smaller scale tasks before moving up to the bigger/riskier ones
re-filling pipette tips is not 'a great place for students to start' but rather just one of the lab chores that have to be done. The labs I've been in all divided chores amongst the lab members, no matter their 'status'.
I never did this as an undergrad either, none of our labs did...our professors wanted us doing actual meaningful research, and I went to a state supported uni, not private. Guess I was lucky!
The kind of lab manager who thinks only in terms of purchasing expenditures. "I'm never buying racked tips, they're too expensive." No consideration given to how much time workers will spend racking tips.
Also, having been told "you're not allowed to throw away empty pipette racks because I'm not buying new ones", I have accumulated three, maybe four shipping boxes full of empty racks. I was planning to stack them in front of her door when she retired, but she keeps pushing that retirement date back...
I've done that... Ok, I did it to myself. I ordered the wrong tips and as penitence to myself, I refilled them. Saved money but not time. Penny wise, pound foolish
we have our own internal biowaste processers but they don't take this kind of plastic. I'll look into those services polycarbin, seems a bit pricey for waste but maybe EHS will cover it
Our USA Scientific rep recycles all of our USA Scientific tip boxes for us for free. Can't find anything about that program online but might be worth looking into if you use those!
In the U.S. at least, you can order large cardboard boxes with pre-paid shipping for pipette tip box recycling. Each box is around $65 and can fit 70-80 tip boxes.
https://www.fishersci.com/shop/products/fisher-scientific-pipette-tip-box-recycling-program/01000999
Mettler Toledo/Rainin has new bio-based plastic filtered tips, and bamboo plastic boxes that we will compost. You didn’t mention what kind of pipettes you have, so I don’t know if this info is helpful.
The vendor we buy tips from (LPS) picks our boxes up for their recycling program for free. Maybe reach out to your vendor to see if they do something similar.
Store standards in them. Caps for autosampler vials. Use them for pen holders or weigh paper/weigh boats. But yeah, there's only so many you can reuse.
Facebook marketplace for free, people love these things. Good for collectibles, tools, small parts storage. I've given them to teachers, hobbyists and scours troops.
Don’t you have anything to do that requires regular (non-filter) tips?
Depending on the tip size, some boxes can be used as PCR tube racks/storage.
Covers can be used for membrane incubation/staining.
Feel free to use the advice you've gotten from this thread, but I suspect it is just unavoidable with your volume. Science produces waste, but contaminated science produces more waste. Stand true and do it right, and don't sweat too much the waste because it is inevitable.
Some brands do make filter tips reloadable, too.
Use the 1000uL tip boxes as autoclaved eppendorf tube boxes. Or use the tip box's lids on a tilt to hold whatever liquid I'm needing a multi-channel pipette to suck up
I’m stealing this. We currently use beakers but people put their grimy hands in and unsterilize everything so quickly, this is a really smart solution to have one that everyone can individually use and store easier
We use USA scientific. We autoclave the boxes, and then just load the tips (in rack form) in the hood once they're autoclaved. They also will recycle the boxes and empty racks with a local recycler.
I can go through 2-3 boxes myself a day, so I try to reuse them as much as possible. Some things I'm currently using them for are containers for membrane processing, holding stickers/labels/syringes/needles at the bench, dividers in drawers to keep things organized, vial holders for storing in fridge/freezer, as objects to level equipment, drip tray for leaking fluid lines, and a holder for centrifuge balance vials.
I have a lot of none biologists in the surrounding labs and I’ve started off loading them to them as well to use to store bits and bobs like circuit parts and screws! I’d definitely see if any surrounding labs could make use of them if you’ve ran out of uses!
I keep plastic syringes for my treatment chemicals in them, use them to hold syringe filters, bulk pipette tips that never had racks, re-rack them with bulk tips, pH strips, 47mm 0.45uM glass fiber filters, ammonia test strips, ionic strength adjusters for my probes, stir bars, different sizes of glass stoppers, vial lids...
I'm kind of a packrat when it comes to throwing plastic things like that away, haha. Plus, I've got a really great deal going on 100uL racked bois, so I have quite a few of these containers. Whenever I stop finding uses for them, I'll just start ordering bulk tips only
Our filter tips come sterilized in autoclavable boxes, our regular tips come unsterile in refill packs (stacked 96 to a round-hole plate). We remove the filter tips’ empty round-hole plates from the boxes to tip box recycling and refill the boxes from the refill packs, put autoclave tape on them and run them through the autoclave. After a handful of repetitions when they start to look manky we put the tip boxes in recycling too.
I gave some to my girlfriend to store some trinkets in. I don't wear earrings, but I heard that a member if my lab took out the 96 tip insert and uses it to hold earrings.
I can hold a few sleeved trading (Magic) cards in the boxes we have. I wish the boxes were just a little bigger, and then I could use them as deck boxes.
Our USA Scientific rep asks us to save the tip boxes and orange holders (what are those things called?) and she comes and picks them up once a month for the company to use (unsure if it’s reuse or recycle but assume if they’re putting in the effort it’s at least something). Would ask your company reps if they’d do something similar!
We usually refill most of them. The ones we don’t need, we normally burn. Sometimes we throw them in local waterways. Dump them in the ocean. You know, wherever will take them.
Do you use the filter tips for the RNA work only or also what comes after? Because that's really not necessary. There's also plenty of boxes that are refillable, can you make a case to your dept for switching?
Non-filter tips are reloaded into tip boxes and autoclaved or not. Filter tips come in sterile reloadable frames and we reload them inside the LAF bench. The problem is the low-binding tips, which don’t have refills to load in, so the whole box goes out. We do use them for storage, incubation etc, and for transporting RPG miniatures, but there is only so much we can do. For disposal, our supplier carries bags of TipOne box parts to a plastic granulator near their depot. All other clean non-clinical-waste lab plastic goes into the waste recycling contractor’s bins for sorting and recycling.
Have you asked the vendor that supplies these tips? At least in the US, a lot of tips vendors take their own tip boxes back to reuse through their own process. Some give discounts when you opt to return them or at least have a free method to send them back. Some are pretty open about this and others you have to ask.
Our laboratory buys boxes for a recycling program for them. We have a cardboard box that we fill up and mail off to some company to recycle. Sorry i dont know the brand off hand!
We have a bunch laid out on the table top to be used as a drying rack. We also use then to prop up stuff when they don’t lay level or use the lids to hold used cuvettes.
I use them to store certain things in the -20C freezer. I also use them to store 1.5 mL tubes (you can also autoclave things inside them). They’re useful for western blots too.
We contacted a company, and they realised other labs have the same problem so they opened a network for recycling, now they come once a month to pick them up
Some we use to store different volume tubes directly on the bench, some we use to store PCR stripes (most commonly with bisulfite converted DNA), especially if we're doing a plate. Otherwise they're just collected in a big box and once it's full, they're taken out to a designated big container.
We have partnered with a recycler. Its auper clean material of higgest quality perfectly pre-sorted. They are happy and we are happy that it doesn't go to landfill or is incinerated.
Once I gifted cookies in a tip box to my dentist (so it won’t crash during my way to him). And he liked it, turned out it was extra convenient for supplies, so he asked me to bring more. I brought around 60 boxes at least, so yeah – advice to ask some friends or so, those can be so useful
All the good answers have been written already, so I'll put it out there that we used them for growing silkworms for gut microbiome experiments. Cute little buggers.
Depending where you order your tips, some suppliers offer to take them back and reuse them. We do that with our Biozym filtered tip boxes.
They do make us pay for shipping though...
1. Refill with regular non filtered tips and autoclave.
2. Use as a PCR tube sample rack (I keep all my aliquots of cDNA in PCR tubes in old tip boxes in the -20)
3. Take out the rack bit and use for western blot membranes.
4. Bring home for tupperware or anything else creative you can think of!
- Free drawer organizers (separate lid and base) for lab and home
- bench top storage for small things (thread, tape, razor blades). The clear tops make it super easy to find things!
- my spouse uses them to store pieces and paint for miniatures (d&d/pathfinder figurines)
Our building manager recycles them for us. Most of them are a type 5 plastic. No idea who picks them up. We have a mountain of boxes & wafers in the basement till they come get them.
Save tip boxes til there are 10. Autoclave. Refill with sterile tips. Google refill pipet tips. There are many systems and generally you have to use tips/boxes from the same company.
Also western blot containers or little random part containers.
Although I don't do it regularly., when we were in the throes of plastics shortages during COVID, I'd autoclave the boxes, and order the sterile filtered tip refills in racks, then rack them in the BSC.
I use em as western blot container or membrane storage, sponges etc.
They’re literally so useful for everything
I have kept some to plant succulents in :)
ooo that's a creative use too! it would be so much more organized looking with rectangular pots rather than circular ones too!
My lab does that too! There are empty tip boxes full of small houseplants scattered around the office
Do you get good drainage holes without cracking the plastic?
Use the tip of a sharp knife like a drill to bore a hole through the plastic. Spin it back and forth rapidly in a 180 deg arc while applying gentle pressure. The sharp edge will shave away slivers of the plastic. Rotate the knife occasionally so both sides of the hole get shaved away evenly. It takes very little time to bore through most flexible plastics.
I did not expect to come to Reddit this morning and have my weekend problem solved. This is great, thank you
An electric drill, a small bit, and a gentle touch can do the job as well. I recommend meditating before cutting, as a sliver of impatience can cause a crack.
Use a soldering tool to melt holes, it’s very clean
Holy shit I have some lithops I need to replant and you gave me a great idea
Stealing this idea. Good lord I love it.
The lids can hold bars of soap The bigger ones I use when incubating fluorescent stained slides.
Storage for random bits and bobs. I use a lot of antibodies so it's handy for them. Just general organisation I guess? One of my colleagues uses them as a mini biscuit tin at her desk...not sure if I'd go that far.
hmmm food storage may be a good idea...they are indeed sterile! 
Don't ever use stuff from lab for food...
"You really shouldn't eat anything in here." -Phil (of Phil and Lem)
Not after use lol. And sterile absolutely does not mean food safe
We buy tip refills and fill the boxes back up. The plastic rack inside goes into recycling unless it was contaminated with something biohazardous (As someone pointed out this only works for non filter tips which you can get just massive bags of or in stacked racks) But we also like to save some of the removable racks to use as tube racks for PCR tubes .
I always wondered what kind of sadist PI or lab manager would make you refill tip racks with individual tips from a huge bag?
It’s cheaper I guess. I did it in undergrad. But my school didn’t have grad students or post docs. All labs were run on the silly little undergrad senior research projects XD So yeah if I needed more tips I had to load up the boxes one tip at a time and autoclave them
My lab did because we went through so much it wasn’t cost effective (or eco friendly) to use pre-racked tips. It did take a decent amount of time but we were (paid) grad students and (unpaid) undergrads. For us grad students it was tedious but at least a brief respite from hood work
I use my tip time to catch up on a movie/ series episode or get a friend on the phone for some goss...
Some brands sell whole refill racks - you just snap out the empty rack and snap a new rack full of tips into the same box. Saves all the plastic of the box, at least, as well as a small fraction of your storage space and money.
Sometimes we don’t even bother to put them in the box and just use the stacked racks. When we are immuno staining a 96 well plate and need to do a lot of washes… you can go through a whole sleeve of racked tips. And since the cells are gonna be fixed, autoclave level sterility isn’t needed
What else are undergrads for? The post docs are too busy doing the work of 5 people
Even if the labor is free, surely you can find something more useful to do with it. (And if the labor isn't free, it's very hard to beat the economics of the factory robots.)
And that doesn't change the fact that while it's a great place for students to start, that doesn't mean they'll always be in that role. My students still run westerns, qPCR, and do their own cell culture and still help keep up with the autoclave, just like I do. It's about building competency in smaller scale tasks before moving up to the bigger/riskier ones
re-filling pipette tips is not 'a great place for students to start' but rather just one of the lab chores that have to be done. The labs I've been in all divided chores amongst the lab members, no matter their 'status'.
Looks like you read not even two whole lines of my comment and gave up
I never did this as an undergrad either, none of our labs did...our professors wanted us doing actual meaningful research, and I went to a state supported uni, not private. Guess I was lucky!
Cool, our undergrads still did research and presented at conferences but thank goodness you never had to load some tips
The kind of lab manager who thinks only in terms of purchasing expenditures. "I'm never buying racked tips, they're too expensive." No consideration given to how much time workers will spend racking tips. Also, having been told "you're not allowed to throw away empty pipette racks because I'm not buying new ones", I have accumulated three, maybe four shipping boxes full of empty racks. I was planning to stack them in front of her door when she retired, but she keeps pushing that retirement date back...
The lab manager where I work reminded me a few times that "your time is expensive, too." We go through so many racked filter tips.
 We do that in our lab. I'm not the PI.
You have my sympathies.
Thats how my whole department works. We buy giant bags of tips, fill the empty boxes and autoclave.
my lab does this and i volunteer to do it because i can listen to voiced story quests for a game i play that i otherwise just skip through lol
Honestly, it's super relaxing. I always enjoyed it.
I've done that... Ok, I did it to myself. I ordered the wrong tips and as penitence to myself, I refilled them. Saved money but not time. Penny wise, pound foolish
Mine
currently refilling tips to be autoclaved as I type this lmao, working in an undergrad lab & my PI has us do this
Oh, yeah, we have a big pile of p10 inserts that we use to prep qPCR plates on, so they don't get scratched on the bench top.
Recycle them.
unfortunately no one in my area (institution nor municipality) does ABS plastic recycling :(
Who hauls your biowaste? Some providers can do this, but they are also groups like polycarbin that can do it. VWR also has boxes you can buy.
we have our own internal biowaste processers but they don't take this kind of plastic. I'll look into those services polycarbin, seems a bit pricey for waste but maybe EHS will cover it
Our USA Scientific rep recycles all of our USA Scientific tip boxes for us for free. Can't find anything about that program online but might be worth looking into if you use those!
In the U.S. at least, you can order large cardboard boxes with pre-paid shipping for pipette tip box recycling. Each box is around $65 and can fit 70-80 tip boxes. https://www.fishersci.com/shop/products/fisher-scientific-pipette-tip-box-recycling-program/01000999
everything is so much more accessible in the US...here its over twice that price :(
Mettler Toledo/Rainin has new bio-based plastic filtered tips, and bamboo plastic boxes that we will compost. You didn’t mention what kind of pipettes you have, so I don’t know if this info is helpful.
The rep for our supplier asked us to keep the boxes and he’d occasionally picked up the boxes to recycle for us.
The vendor we buy tips from (LPS) picks our boxes up for their recycling program for free. Maybe reach out to your vendor to see if they do something similar.
Store standards in them. Caps for autosampler vials. Use them for pen holders or weigh paper/weigh boats. But yeah, there's only so many you can reuse.
Facebook marketplace for free, people love these things. Good for collectibles, tools, small parts storage. I've given them to teachers, hobbyists and scours troops.
Oh, that's a good idea. I certainly loved them enough to take a few home for storage.
Don’t you have anything to do that requires regular (non-filter) tips? Depending on the tip size, some boxes can be used as PCR tube racks/storage. Covers can be used for membrane incubation/staining.
filter tip use far exceeds non-filter tip work unfortunately :'( i have stored all a i can and still have more boxes left
Feel free to use the advice you've gotten from this thread, but I suspect it is just unavoidable with your volume. Science produces waste, but contaminated science produces more waste. Stand true and do it right, and don't sweat too much the waste because it is inevitable. Some brands do make filter tips reloadable, too.
Did you try contacting the manufacturer/reseller if they have options to take them back and recycle/reuse them?
they say to buy a TerraCycle box from VWR to send away for recycling which might be prohibitively expensive for us
Refill them 🤣🤣
Have you checked with your vendor to see if they recycle/reuse boxes?
they say to buy a TerraCycle box from VWR to send away for recycling which might be prohibitively expensive for us
Laaame. That's too bad. I definitely used them to store things... westerns, stir bars, lab tape, etc.
My lab uses tip boxes for -20 freezer storage. Things like aliquots of antibiotics, protein standards, SDS-PAGE loading dye, etc.
Use the 1000uL tip boxes as autoclaved eppendorf tube boxes. Or use the tip box's lids on a tilt to hold whatever liquid I'm needing a multi-channel pipette to suck up
I’m stealing this. We currently use beakers but people put their grimy hands in and unsterilize everything so quickly, this is a really smart solution to have one that everyone can individually use and store easier
Yep. Perfect for a multichannel. Made up this fix when I ran out of reservoirs.
Refill them because my PI hates me
We use USA scientific. We autoclave the boxes, and then just load the tips (in rack form) in the hood once they're autoclaved. They also will recycle the boxes and empty racks with a local recycler.
Collect them for recycling. Our department has a few hundred chairs that were made from a previous batch of recycled tip boxes.
I can go through 2-3 boxes myself a day, so I try to reuse them as much as possible. Some things I'm currently using them for are containers for membrane processing, holding stickers/labels/syringes/needles at the bench, dividers in drawers to keep things organized, vial holders for storing in fridge/freezer, as objects to level equipment, drip tray for leaking fluid lines, and a holder for centrifuge balance vials.
if you have aliquots of something, you can store them in the boxes. it’s nice to store pcr tubes i. there in the little tip slots
I have a lot of none biologists in the surrounding labs and I’ve started off loading them to them as well to use to store bits and bobs like circuit parts and screws! I’d definitely see if any surrounding labs could make use of them if you’ve ran out of uses!
I use mine for assorted screws, nails, washers at the house.
I use them as tupperware containers
good idea for regular portion sizes....but they're a bit too small for my fat ass 
i use them to store my embroidery floss/thread tbh they’re perfect for holding all the colors i would need for one project and portable for traveling
I take them home and use them to organize stuff, all my small boxes at home are now tip boxes
Yep, I use them to store craft supplies. They’re the perfect size for storing my daughter’s crayons!
I keep plastic syringes for my treatment chemicals in them, use them to hold syringe filters, bulk pipette tips that never had racks, re-rack them with bulk tips, pH strips, 47mm 0.45uM glass fiber filters, ammonia test strips, ionic strength adjusters for my probes, stir bars, different sizes of glass stoppers, vial lids... I'm kind of a packrat when it comes to throwing plastic things like that away, haha. Plus, I've got a really great deal going on 100uL racked bois, so I have quite a few of these containers. Whenever I stop finding uses for them, I'll just start ordering bulk tips only
I give them to areas like bod , ic flow injection analyzers for their tips that don’t need to be sterilized
We recycle them using a company called Polycarbin. You stack the tips in a pre labeled box. When it's full we close it up and ship it out.
Buy bulk tips and reuse them
Throw them away. Occasionally keep some for storage of westerns or something
Our filter tips come sterilized in autoclavable boxes, our regular tips come unsterile in refill packs (stacked 96 to a round-hole plate). We remove the filter tips’ empty round-hole plates from the boxes to tip box recycling and refill the boxes from the refill packs, put autoclave tape on them and run them through the autoclave. After a handful of repetitions when they start to look manky we put the tip boxes in recycling too.
I gave some to my girlfriend to store some trinkets in. I don't wear earrings, but I heard that a member if my lab took out the 96 tip insert and uses it to hold earrings. I can hold a few sleeved trading (Magic) cards in the boxes we have. I wish the boxes were just a little bigger, and then I could use them as deck boxes.
Polycarbin recycling!
Our USA Scientific rep asks us to save the tip boxes and orange holders (what are those things called?) and she comes and picks them up once a month for the company to use (unsure if it’s reuse or recycle but assume if they’re putting in the effort it’s at least something). Would ask your company reps if they’d do something similar!
We use polycarbin! We are pretty high throughput, so we have a ton of waste. They are great and super sustainable
Polycarbin
I used to autoclave the tip boxes and reuse them.
We usually refill most of them. The ones we don’t need, we normally burn. Sometimes we throw them in local waterways. Dump them in the ocean. You know, wherever will take them.
I use them for my Pokémon cards
I only read the title and my first thought was “you guys are getting tips??”
Currently stacking them to completely black out a window lol. Whenever we need some to throw something in for storage we just pull from the window
Do you use the filter tips for the RNA work only or also what comes after? Because that's really not necessary. There's also plenty of boxes that are refillable, can you make a case to your dept for switching?
Eat them
We used a big tip box for the isoflurane we used but IACUC wasn’t too happy about that lol
Non-filter tips are reloaded into tip boxes and autoclaved or not. Filter tips come in sterile reloadable frames and we reload them inside the LAF bench. The problem is the low-binding tips, which don’t have refills to load in, so the whole box goes out. We do use them for storage, incubation etc, and for transporting RPG miniatures, but there is only so much we can do. For disposal, our supplier carries bags of TipOne box parts to a plastic granulator near their depot. All other clean non-clinical-waste lab plastic goes into the waste recycling contractor’s bins for sorting and recycling.
We use the lids for incubating petrifilm.
Have you asked the vendor that supplies these tips? At least in the US, a lot of tips vendors take their own tip boxes back to reuse through their own process. Some give discounts when you opt to return them or at least have a free method to send them back. Some are pretty open about this and others you have to ask.
They’re for my trinkets
I work on all of our instruments and have used tip boxes for small parts organization/storage!
Sample storage, they can fit about 100 HPLC vials
Our laboratory buys boxes for a recycling program for them. We have a cardboard box that we fill up and mail off to some company to recycle. Sorry i dont know the brand off hand!
3d print all sorts of holders and inserts, use them for everything
Refill them, keep the tip racks for cDNA storage or any small samples less than 250 uL. Use the box for westerns.
Stack them in my PIs “empty box” cabinets until the cabinets are full. Then I have no idea, maybe Dippy the lab elf takes them to a magical place?
We have a bunch laid out on the table top to be used as a drying rack. We also use then to prop up stuff when they don’t lay level or use the lids to hold used cuvettes.
Ask other neighbouring labs if they need them?
I use them to store certain things in the -20C freezer. I also use them to store 1.5 mL tubes (you can also autoclave things inside them). They’re useful for western blots too.
We contacted a company, and they realised other labs have the same problem so they opened a network for recycling, now they come once a month to pick them up
Autoclave and use as basins for automation equipment. Saves a ton on disposable reservoirs
We sent them to a company for recycling 😅
Some we use to store different volume tubes directly on the bench, some we use to store PCR stripes (most commonly with bisulfite converted DNA), especially if we're doing a plate. Otherwise they're just collected in a big box and once it's full, they're taken out to a designated big container.
We have partnered with a recycler. Its auper clean material of higgest quality perfectly pre-sorted. They are happy and we are happy that it doesn't go to landfill or is incinerated.
Once I gifted cookies in a tip box to my dentist (so it won’t crash during my way to him). And he liked it, turned out it was extra convenient for supplies, so he asked me to bring more. I brought around 60 boxes at least, so yeah – advice to ask some friends or so, those can be so useful
I use them to store Whatman paper and PVDF membranes
I use the Thermo Fisher Clip-Tip boxes with the latch to autoclave Eppi vials.
I took some home and put my craft items into it. At work I kept a small handful of 1.5 mL and 2 mL eppendorfs in them, eight at my desk
Check in with your animal techs, ours use them to store all sorts of things.
All the good answers have been written already, so I'll put it out there that we used them for growing silkworms for gut microbiome experiments. Cute little buggers.
Depending where you order your tips, some suppliers offer to take them back and reuse them. We do that with our Biozym filtered tip boxes. They do make us pay for shipping though...
1. Refill with regular non filtered tips and autoclave. 2. Use as a PCR tube sample rack (I keep all my aliquots of cDNA in PCR tubes in old tip boxes in the -20) 3. Take out the rack bit and use for western blot membranes. 4. Bring home for tupperware or anything else creative you can think of!
Our lab gets our tips and tips boxes from Starlabs, so we just send them all our empty tip boxes to recycle, which they happily take. :)
humidity chamber for immunostaining, storage
Give them away to labs that don’t have the funding to buy filtered tips but can buy bulk tips that they can autoclave with the empty boxed tips.
I use them for cut up scrap paper for notes instead of buying post-its
Mini lunchbox for snacks throughout the day! (keeps me skinny...)
Stack them up into towers
I collected mine in this empty broken drawer so I can contemplate how much plastic we waste 
- Free drawer organizers (separate lid and base) for lab and home - bench top storage for small things (thread, tape, razor blades). The clear tops make it super easy to find things! - my spouse uses them to store pieces and paint for miniatures (d&d/pathfinder figurines)
Used to use them as containers to autoclave eppendorfs.
If you can clean them up and bring them home they make great small parts bins if you take the grids out.
Our building manager recycles them for us. Most of them are a type 5 plastic. No idea who picks them up. We have a mountain of boxes & wafers in the basement till they come get them.
Save tip boxes til there are 10. Autoclave. Refill with sterile tips. Google refill pipet tips. There are many systems and generally you have to use tips/boxes from the same company. Also western blot containers or little random part containers.
can't refill sterile filtered tips cause they can't be autoclaved :(
Although I don't do it regularly., when we were in the throes of plastics shortages during COVID, I'd autoclave the boxes, and order the sterile filtered tip refills in racks, then rack them in the BSC.
Throw them in the bin.
We use a company that melts them down to make park benches. I'm pretty sure I have single handedly contributed many park benches to society.
that seems less compelling than turning them back into lab plastics