Is science able to cure plastic addiction?
The Carbon Neutral Laboratory: Exploring the Carbon Footprint of Researchers in an Old-School Chemistry Lab, Part 2: A Preliminary Report
According to Durgan, “most of the scientists that I work with are pretty knowledgeable on environmental issues and want to do the right thing.” “It’s maybe just hard to understand the best way to manage that impact.”
Before scientists make any changes to their protocols, they should be confident that their results won’t be affected. “If your research requires you to use 20 litres of solvent or 20 pipette tips, you should absolutely do that,” Freese says. “You should not feel bad about conducting more experiments if it means your results become more significant and reproducible.”
The carbon neutral laboratory is encouraging scientists to reduce their use of toxic solvent, which have been part of standard protocols for decades “If a reaction that I want to do requires me to use dichloromethane, I will then challenge myself to look for an alternative,” Licence says.
He says that the carbon neutral laboratory has found ways to improve efficiency. Licence and he say that they share a lot of things. Sharing takes more planning and patience, but helps to save energy and space while promoting conversation and collaboration. “The entire building is designed to make people think differently. In a traditional old-school chemistry department students and academics share ideas, work together and often translate knowledge in a way that is 888-282-0465 888-282-0465 888-282-0465.
Still, it will take some time for the lab to live up to its name. The original goal was for the project to have enough time to allow for energy savings to offset the energy required for the construction. “We are, at the moment, slightly behind target because there’s been some technical problems with some of the mechanical, electrical and combined heat and power units that are run on biomass,” Licence says. “I’m fairly confident that we will achieve carbon neutrality by the 25-year time frame. We probably are three, four or five years behind the payback schedule at this point.
A 2024 report in the journal RSC Sustainability laid out some eye-opening statistics: at a typical university, research laboratories account for at least 60% of the energy and water use1. The per person climate-maintenance guidelines in the Paris agreement are 5–11% less than the work related carbon footprint of researchers.
Some steps can be as simple as pushing a few buttons. The temperature of the 40 ultra-cold freezers were raised from 80 C to 70 C, according to Durgan. Some researchers warned that, if the freezers ever malfunctioned, the samples would spoil faster without that extra 10 °C cushion. To ease those concerns, Durgan spoke to Martin Howes, then the sustainable-labs coordinator at the University of Cambridge, UK, who reported that scientists there had made the adjustment without any issues. She was also reassured by the roster of researchers who reported their own experiences with −70 °C freezers to My Green Lab (see go.nature.com/3xtbeen). The move at the Babraham reduced energy consumption by 20% without affecting the frozen samples.
Fume hoods are also prime targets in energy-conservation efforts. A typical fume hood uses 3.5 times more energy than the average household does each year. Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has estimated that it costs more than US$4,500 to run a fume hood per year, a significant dent to a lab’s budget. Simply closing the sliding window at the front of the hood when not working on an experiment can cut the airflow rate by two-thirds, with similar reductions in energy expenditure1. The energy costs were reduced by nearly $200,000 every year as a result of the Harvard initiative.
Fretz says that although the team has tried using glass and stainless steel in place of plastics in active-air and surface-microcosm studies, each collection can have upwards of 500–1,000 samples, which means that substantial time and space is needed for cleaning and sterilizing. He says that plastic single-use consumables have become the de facto solution because we don’t have enough staff, lab space or budget to handle this additional workload.
Towards sustainable biomedical research: What can we do about it if we don’t think about what we’re doing, what we can do, and how we can improve it
Durgan believes that more waste could be created if the results of the research aren’t reliable. She says that the international research community is going to waste a lot of time and resources if we don’t make sure our data is reliable.
Scientists can’t just look at manufacturers’ labels to determine which products deliver efficiency without compromising their research results Firms can attach claims of sustainable to wasteful products in a practice called greenwashing. “Companies are using their own standards,” Connelly said. You need to be smart to know which standards are reliable and which aren’t.
In a bid to improve clarity, My Green Lab has created an environmental-impact score database of independent scores for more than 1,200 lab supplies. The full life cycle of a product, including manufacturing impact, use of energy and water, packaging, and ultimate disposal, are taken into account when calculating the scores.
Science can be meaningful, but it might need a stronger incentive structure to get more labs to join the movement, Durgan says. She applauds the Concordat for the Environmental Sustainability of Research and Innovation Practice, released in April by Wellcome in London, the largest UK charity in terms of expenditure and a major funder of biomedical science worldwide (see go.nature.com/4d4dpqs). By the end of 2015, My Green Labs and the programme at University College London will be the laboratories that will be funded by Wellcome. Likewise, Cancer Research UK — which has set a goal to reduce its direct and indirect carbon emissions by 50% by 2030 — will require that all funding applicants be LEAF-certified by 2026.
Durgan says funding agencies are the only entity that can bring large-scale change. Funding for sustainable initiatives is going to depend on the people who are motivated from an environmental perspective.
To incentivize a shift away from single-use plastics in research, universities have rolled out funding mechanisms and educational workshops. The laboratories at King’s College London are being aided in achieving accreditation under the International scheme called the Laboratory Efficiency Assessment Framework. “One success story we had was how a PhD student led a lab to replace single-use non-recyclable plastic well-plates with reusable ceramic well-plates for brain-section immunohistochemistry staining,” says Broadbent.
In a statement to Nature, the NIH Office of Extramural Research said it doesn’t require lab certification, but does “consider the scientific environment during peer review and monitor compliance with all requirements post-award through our grants oversight procedures”.
Reconciling the future of plastic-waste strategies in higher-learning institutions: A case study of the UK’s King’s College
Even more impressive results have been reported by individual labs. In 2022, Jane Kilcoyne achieved an annual savings of $16,000 by changing the temperature of the freezer, closing the fume hoods, and ordering and preparing only needed solutions and reagents.
A 2019 master’s thesis investigated the plastic-waste strategies of 76 of the country’s higher-learning institutions. The author found that around 64% of waste-cutting pledges were limited strictly to catering settings, and included banning plastic coffee cups and food containers. There were measures to reduce the use of single-use plastic in laboratories. Most universities did not quantify the success of their efforts to reduce plastic waste for a variety of reasons.
“Back in the lab, after sample collection, most of the reagents for DNA/RNA extraction and library preparation are also packaged in plastic,” Fretz says. There are challenges for lab safety as glass is less likely to break accidentally and create a hazardous spill, so we could substitute some plastic with glassware.
Ultimately, says Dainton, the trial data showed that the programme worked well, and, as a result, UWE Bristol has formalized a partnership between its College of Health, Science & Society and RecycleLab, which is based in Chipping Norton, UK. A 10% of the plastic waste generated by the college each year will be recycled through this partnership.
The authors noted that adopting their practices would require considerable operational and behavioural changes, which often acts as a deterrent. The metal loop used to platebacteria needs to be heated to make sure it doesn’t get stuck, and the plastic containers used to store chemicals need to go to a special facility for cleaning.
But times are changing, says Broadbent. The team is working on a case for glass containers that was funded by King’s College. “While using glass vials was common in the past, implementing this change now requires careful consideration of costs, labour, safety and materials,” Broadbent says.
The disposal of these vials, along with flies and food, involves incineration at high temperatures, which generates substantial carbon emissions. With the environmental impact growing, addressing this issue is an urgent priority for the team.
A UK laboratory’s Carbon Neutral Laboratory has suggested scientists to reduce their use of toxic solvents, which have been part of standard protocols for decades. It said scientists should use only 20 litres of solvent or 20 tips instead of 20 litres. Research laboratories account for at least 60% of the energy and water use at a typical university.