Comment by doodlesdev
20 hours ago
I believe the biggest reason to use glass is that it doesn't react with much stuff, but I've yet to see an explanation for why your idea wouldn't work. I imagine there could be problems with autoclaves (i.e. degradation of the polymer) and fear of chemical leaching.
Polymer coated glass is commonplace in chemistry labs for large containers of hazardous reagents held in storage. There's no chemical leaching concern because it's on the outside.
If anything, disposable plastic test tubes are the norm in microbiology labs at this point. No need to autoclave because they come sterile and you throw them away after a single use.
Plenty of plastic that's designed for it goes through the autoclave. For example micropipette tips. Nearly all of it is disposable single use so it only has to withstand a single cycle.
Not sure that throwing away plastic tubes with samples of plague bacteria is a good idea
Disposing of and throwing away are two different things. Throwing away is a subclass of 'disposing of' and there are many other such subclasses including safe destruction, for instance by incineration.
That’s what the autoclave is for.
I'm pretty sure that it goes into a biohazard container that is then sterilized and probably incinerated.