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Sustainability

To kick off Spotlight On Sustainable Research month, Environment and Energy held a workshop for boosting lab performance on 15 February which was kindly hosted by the Sainsbury Laboratory.

Over twenty people from a wide array of departments (including Pathology, Medicine, MRC Epidemiology, Chemistry, Biochemistry, Sainsbury Laboratory, Clinical Neurosciences, Chemical Engineering & Biotechnology) came together to share their top-tips when pursuing a more efficient laboratory environment.

The discussion considered five main themes, each of which is a focus of the University’s Green Labs initiative. Read on for some of the key learnings from the session, and some ‘top tips’ which came out of the discussion – do you already implement these in your lab?

Chemicals & materials

The University’s Safety Office provides a chemical inventory system, ChemInventory, free of charge to departments. This became mandatory for University departments last year. Using the system, users can view and therefore better control their stocks, helping to reduce wastage and identify savings.

  • Top tip: The ChemInventory system has an option to share visibility of chemical stocks with neighbouring groups. Sharing is caring and helps minimise spare stocks going unused as well as needless over-ordering.

Scientific equipment

By auditing the equipment in your lab, and keeping up-to-date records of equipment, you can identify under-used equipment which is wasting energy and space. Monitoring the electricity consumption of individual pieces of equipment can help prioritise equipment replacements.

  • Top tip: Why not get a socket power logger from the Environment & Energy section to monitor usage of kit in your lab?
  • Top tip: Apply for funding from the Equipment Replacement Programme to replace your old, inefficient lab equipment.
  • Top tip: Use the Equipment Sharing Project to make use of equipment already at the University. Your department saves money on purchasing equipment, and you can share your under-used equipment in return.

Building & services

Lab refurbishments and relocating between buildings both provide a big opportunity to consider sustainability in the planning stages and set the foundations for efficient usage.

  • Top tip: Contact the Environment & Energy team about the many disposal or sale options for un-wanted equipment from your lab refurbishment.
  • Top tip: Encourage your department’s ‘representative user’ for refurbishment projects to contact Environment & Energy for advice on integrating lab efficiency and sustainability into the project.

Water

Assessing how water is used in your lab can have a big impact, particularly where high grades of water are being used. Can a lower grade of water be used, and less of it?

  • Top tip: Make water usage a consideration when procuring new equipment.

Waste

Legal and safe waste disposal is of paramount importance. Guidelines do shift over time, and risk assessments should be reviewed periodically. Question the status quo.

  • Top tip: Optimise the settings in your waste treatment machinery. For example, reconfigure autoclave cycle time settings to trim excessive energy-intensive ‘kill stage’ conditions.

These are just a few examples of the outcomes of the discussion, and it was great to have different departments discussing their successes and challenges. The workshop also helped clarify priorities for the Green Lab initiative, which is working to help departments reduce the environmental impact of their research facilities. This is just the start of an ongoing conversation on improving the efficiency and sustainability of our research at Cambridge. Visit https://www.environment.admin.cam.ac.uk/green-labs for more information and feel free to get in touch with any of your queries and ideas about boosting the performance of your lab.