How To Make Your Lab More Sustainable

How to Guide 1 How To Make Your Lab More Sustainable Charlotte Houghton, PhD Laboratories are essential to support life-enhancing research across a broad range of disciplines, including pharmaceuticals, life science research and, increasingly, computational research. However, to limit global warming to 1.5 °C, a key target agreed in the Paris Climate Agreement in 20151, all industries need to reduce their carbon emissions and lower their wider environmental impact. Laboratories have intense energy and water operations and can have high “scope 3” emissions due to the equipment, consumables and associated supply chain. There is a growing global community of sustainable laboratory professionals that offers support and guidance in relation to the seemingly large challenge of reducing laboratories’ carbon footprints. This network, along with local programs and related resources, gives laboratories a starting point along with quick actions that can be implemented to increase the sustainability of their operations without impacting research output and quality. In this guide, we highlight some of the priority areas for laboratories and the associated actions that can be taken. Calculate your laboratory’s carbon footprint As with any scientific endeavor, establishing a baseline is an essential starting point. This gives you quantifiable data on the emissions generated by your laboratory to help identify and target actions for prioritization. Ideally, you would calculate your carbon footprint before implementing any changes and then recalculate your emissions to show the decrease you have achieved. There are a few options to help you calculate it, with the caveat that these are estimates. There are free online resources that can be used; Labos 1point52 allows you to estimate the carbon footprint of a research laboratory. The caveat here is that this is intended for French public research and the carbon emissions factors will be different to other countries. There is also the Laboratory Benchmarking Tool3 created by the International Institute for Sustainable Laboratories (I2SL) that allows you to see your carbon emissions in relation to other laboratories of the same size. For computational research, the Green Algorithms4 calculator gives an estimate for each computation your lab carries out and some tips on how to reduce these emissions. HOW TO MAKE YOUR LAB MORE SUSTAINABLE 2 How to Guide Optimize your purchasing towards sustainability Ensure your purchasing processes have sustainability embedded at every step to improve the sustainability of your laboratory across multiple areas, including energy and waste. One of the most important actions is to confirm you have an up-to-date inventory of chemicals, equipment and consumables. Keeping track of everything means you will only order what you need and also allows you to bulk buy, reducing the number of deliveries. Create a list of orders and order at a specific time of the month or week to consolidate the number of orders. This will further reduce deliveries and their associated emissions. For equipment, you should ask suppliers to provide you with life cycle assessments or, as a minimum, the energy/water/gas/consumables information so you can make the most sustainable choice. Choosing the equipment with the lowest energy consumption and lowest consumable requirement will lower the emissions over the lifetime of the equipment and save your lab money! For consumables, select suppliers that: • Have reduced packaging options • Use packaging that can be reused or recycled • Offer take-back schemes for packaging or product recycling. This will not only result in more sustainable procurement but reduce the waste produced by your lab. Reduce energy consumption Once you have bought your laboratory equipment, you can take simple steps to ensure it uses the minimum energy possible during its day-to-day use and across its lifetime. Up to 25% of your laboratory’s energy consumption comes from benchtop equipment that is left plugged in and powered up, even when not required. Regular maintenance of equipment will improve its lifespan and efficiency; most suppliers should be able to provide a maintenance contract alongside the purchase. It might sound obvious, but make sure you switch off equipment when not in use. Place reminders on plug sockets and/or use timer switches for non-sensitive pieces of equipment. Fume hoods can use up to 3–4 households’ worth of energy per day, and although they are required to operate 24/7, shutting the sash when not in use can reduce energy consumption by 30–50%.5 Stickers can be added to units to remind users to shut the sash or automatic sash closers can be installed. Optimizing the temperatures of your cold storage equipment is also an important energy-saving action. Ensure fridges are running at the correct temperature, and not lower, to reduce the energy used. For ultra-low temperature freezers, consider raising the temperature from −80 °C to −70 °C, as this can result in a 20–30% energy saving depending on the age of the unit.6 Manage water consumption Water is a precious natural resource that needs to be conserved and used as efficiently as possible. Within a laboratory environment, large amounts of water can be used in day-to-day processes due to high-quality water requirements, single pass cooling for equipment and cleaning. But, with the tips below, this can be reduced. HOW TO MAKE YOUR LAB MORE SUSTAINABLE 3 How to Guide The use of steam baths and water baths is essential in certain labs but there are steps you can take to reduce the water required. Where possible, replace steam baths with heating blocks, to remove the water requirement entirely, as they generally use less energy. For water baths, ensure a lid is used during operation, or invest in beads that remove the need for water. Another high-use activity is cleaning glassware; your processes should be reviewed to ensure the minimum volume is used. Consider soaking glassware rather than rinsing under a running a tap as a first step during cleaning. Audit your waste Laboratories produce a huge amount of waste, ranging from general waste and recyclable waste to hazardous solid and liquid waste. Disposing of waste responsibly will drastically reduce your laboratory’s indirect emissions and possibly save money on disposal costs! The first thing to do is to audit your waste to assess how much of each category you are producing on a weekly basis. Once you know how much waste you produce, and what type it is, you can then look to increase how much you recycle through your already established recycling routes. Research whether your lab can swap single-use plastics for glass alternatives for non-critical processes (e.g., Petri dishes and pipettes) to reduce the waste produced. Some single-use plastics, such as bottles for buffers or falcon tubes, can be decontaminated and reused before they are disposed of. For solid and liquid chemical waste, implementing green chemistry principles such as reducing experiment size or choosing less hazardous alternatives will reduce the amount of hazardous waste produced and will reduce the emissions related to disposal. Increase engagement with sustainability One vital step towards increasing the sustainability of your laboratory, and ultimately reducing your carbon emissions, is to make sure every lab user is engaged with the sustainability actions you are implementing. This ensures that sustainability becomes embedded into the culture of the laboratory, just as health and safety is, and that it is not solely one person’s responsibility to implement these actions. Sign your laboratory up to a certification program such as LEAF7 or My Green Lab8 to give you more actions to implement. This can also be used as an engagement tool for other lab members and across your organization. Creating a community of like-minded individuals will help keep up the motivation for sustainable actions and allow sharing of best practices. This can be achieved through regular sustainability coffee mornings or by circulating newsletters highlighting progress. Conclusion Finding ways to reduce your laboratory’s carbon emissions may initially seem daunting, but, as this guide has highlighted, there are lots of simple steps you can take to make an impact. Small actions add up to a large reduction over time. None of these changes will impact the research quality or output of your lab, meaning your research still takes priority but it can be achieved in a more sustainable way. Sponsored by HOW TO MAKE YOUR LAB MORE SUSTAINABLE 4 How to Guide References 1. UNFCCC. The Paris Agreement. United Nations Climate Change. https://unfccc.int/process-and-meetings/the-paris-agreement. Published 2015. Accessed September 12, 2023. 2. 1point5 | Applications. apps.labos1point5.org. https://apps.labos1point5.org/. Accessed September 12, 2023. 3. Laboratory Benchmarking Tool: Buildings. lbt.i2sl.org. https://lbt.i2sl.org/. Accessed September 12, 2023. 4. Green algorithms: Towards environmentally sustainable computational science. Green Algorithms. https://www.green-algorithms. org/. Accessed September 12, 2023. 5. O’Neil NJ, Scott S, Relph R, Ponnusamy E. Approaches to incorporating green chemistry and safety into laboratory culture. J Chem Educ. 2020;98(1):84-91. doi: 10.1021/acs.jchemed.0c00134 6. May M. Adding efficiency to general lab equipment. Science. 2016;352(6285):614-616. doi: 10.1126/science.352.6285.614 7. UCL. LEAF - Laboratory Efficiency Assessment Framework. Sustainable UCL. https://www.ucl.ac.uk/sustainable/leaf-laboratory- efficiency-assessment-framework. Published August 10, 2022. Accessed September 12, 2023. 8. Green Lab certification. My Green Lab. https://www.mygreenlab.org/green-lab-certification.html. Accessed September 12, 2023.