My Green Lab and the International Institute for Sustainable Laboratories (I2SL) are thrilled to announce that the 2023 Freezer Challenge has saved a whopping 20.7 million kWh of energy, corresponding to about 14,663 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent — more than double the amount of CO2 saved in last year’s challenge! In our largest competition ever, nearly 2,000 laboratories around the world participated in the Freezer Challenge — a free competition that promotes energy efficiency through best practices in cold storage management. This year, participating labs contributed to saving energy equivalent to 37.5 million miles driven by an average gas-powered vehicle. "The success of the 2023 Freezer Challenge underscores the dedicated efforts of thousands of scientists worldwide. Doubling last year’s CO2 savings reflects a shared commitment to sustainable practices in energy conservation,” says James Connelly, CEO, My Green Lab. “The exponential growth in impact from the Freezer Challenge signals a shift in the science industry to embrace sustainability. It proves that small actions in the lab multiplied across the globe can have a significant impact." Launched globally in 2017 by My Green Lab and I2SL, the International Laboratory Freezer Challenge has saved 44.7 million kWh worth of energy to date, reducing CO2 emissions by 31,678 metric tons, which is the equivalent of saving energy consumed by 6,164 homes for one year. This year’s incredible growth is an indication that the scientific sector is taking sustainability seriously. Labs from 27 different countries contributed to a 42% rise in participating organizations compared to 2022, reflecting a wider global involvement. 2023 Freezer Challenge Winners With over 26,000 participating cold storage units, thousands of scientists and 170 organizations committed to sustainability took part in making this year’s challenge a success. Over the course of the six-month competition, labs accumulate points for adopting sustainable practices concerning their cold storage units, including actions that enhance energy efficiency, ensure sample accessibility, and maintain sample integrity. To determine the winners, the number of points earned as well as the amount of energy saved by each lab was considered. While every participating lab is a winner for helping save an incredible amount of energy, we are proud to recognize labs and organizations in several categories for their noteworthy contributions to the 2023 Freezer Challenge. Winners will be recognized at the upcoming I2SL Annual Conference in October and will also be interviewed for an article in Lab Manager magazine. Testimonials from Some of Our 2023 Winners "We are delighted to be recognised with the Top Organization and Small Size Lab Awards. Participating in the Freezer Challenge is more than a friendly challenge among colleagues; it signifies our collective commitment to sustainable science. Every kilowatt saved reflects our dedication to not only pioneering research but also to safeguarding our planet for future generations. We all have a role to play." — Juliette White, CBE, Vice President, Global Sustainability and Safety, Health & Environment, AstraZeneca. "We were delighted to hear the news of winning the award. Signing up to the challenge motivated us to implement a management plan for our cold storage equipment and it was well worth the effort." — Dr. Jane Kilcoyne, Analytical Chemist at Marine Institute Ireland. “The GI/Onc group has been a part of the Green Labs initiative here at Hopkins since day one. Earning the Freezer Challenge award is icing on the cake, the cake being our Platinum My Green Lab Certification. We plan on earning Green during our recertification.” — James Leatherman, Lab Manager for GI Oncology Research, Dr. Elizabeth Jaffee and the team at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine List of All Our 2023 Winners: Note: Winning Streak Awards are given to previous year's winners that exceeded their energy savings from last year. Biotech/Pharmaceutical Sector Winners
Academic Sector Winners
Government Sector Winners
Hospital/Clinical/Other Winners
Honorable Mentions
Learn more about the Freezer Challenge here. Interested in getting notified when the 2024 competition launches? Sign up via the button below. The Freezer Challenge is a joint program run by My Green Lab and the International Institute for Sustainable Laboratories (I2SL) and is made possible through the generosity of industry sponsors. Our sponsors for the 2023 competition are: Eppendorf, Stirling Ultracold, B Medical Systems, Gilead, Elemental Machines, Amgen, PHCbi, and Thermo Fisher Scientific.
Collaboration empowers organizations to achieve carbon commitments and holds companies accountable for turning commitment into action. My Green Lab is proud to announce our renewed partnership with the United Nations High-Level Climate Champions. Supporting the United Nations’ Race to Zero Campaign, which aims to halve global carbon emissions by 2030, this renewed collaboration will empower more organizations than ever to achieve their carbon commitments through My Green Lab’s programs and research.
Building on the success of the current partnership in advancing the biotech and pharma industry’s commitments, the renewed partnership will more broadly address the healthcare value chain. My Green Lab’s VP of Investments and Partnerships, Ryan Arnold, has been appointed the Health Sector Lead at the High-Level Climate Champions. “Biotech and pharma play a huge role within the sector, but there are more opportunities across the healthcare value chain where My Green Lab’s tools can help drive systemic change,” says Arnold. My Green Lab Certification was selected as a Race to Zero Breakthrough Outcome in 2021, establishing a target that 95% of labs in biotech and pharma achieve Certification at the highest level by 2030. Over 2,000 labs and 24,000 scientists from 45 countries have engaged with the program, including 35 of the largest biotech and pharma companies. Currently, 71% of companies in the sector with over $1 billion in revenue that have joined the Race to Zero are working on a My Green Lab Certification. The rapidly growing program is recognized as the gold standard for laboratory sustainability best practices worldwide. In addition to ensuring the adoption of My Green Lab Certification in laboratories, the renewed partnership will build upon My Green Lab’s groundbreaking report on the carbon impact of biotech and pharma that tracks the industry's progress to net zero carbon. “With only seven years until 2030, we must urgently accelerate the decarbonization of all parts of the economy. My Green Lab has been our key partner since 2022 to align the pharma and biotech sector with the goals of the Paris Agreement. This year, we’re thrilled to expand our partnership to the whole health sector and focus on both decarbonization and resilience in the frame of the 2030 Breakthroughs and the Sharm El Sheikh Adaptation Agenda, with expected highlights at COP28,” says Emmanuelle Pinault, Director of Systems Transformation, High-Level Climate Champions. This article was originally published on the Barcelona Biomedical Research Park’s (PRBB) website el·lipse and was written by Maruxa Martínez-Campos. The Integra Therapeutics group has worked together to achieve My Green Lab Certification; the first institution at the PRBB to get certified. Sustainability is an increasingly recognized value – and laboratories around the world are taking action to try to reduce their environmental footprint as much as possible. My Green Lab is a non-profit organization focused on building a global culture of sustainability in science. Their program, My Green Lab Certification, was designed to help scientists and the teams that support laboratories with actionable ways to make meaningful changes towards adopting sustainable science practices. Recognized as the international gold standard for laboratory sustainability, My Green Lab Certification teaches green lab best practices and helps labs save money and preserve resources, all while ensuring a safe, healthy, and fun environment in support of science. The program has supported over 1,770 labs in a range of sectors. Integra Therapeutics, a Pompeu Fabra University spin-off dedicated to the development of a new genetic engineering tool, has become the first institution in the Barcelona Biomedical Research Park (PRBB) in Spain to receive a Platinum-level My Green Lab Certification. Natalia Artigas, a member of Integra Therapeutics and a My Green Lab Ambassador, shared her experience during the My Green Lab Certification process, and highlighted the valuable lessons Integra Therapeutics learned throughout the journey. Natalia is an active participant in the PRBB sustainability group, where she shares information and the tools she learned throughout the process. What has the certification consisted of? At My Green Lab, they are very lab-focused, and they understand very well how labs work. The first thing they do ask your lab a lot of questions about the technical equipment you have and show you how to improve the energy efficiency of that particular equipment. They also ask about things that go beyond the particular lab, questions relevant to the infrastructure of the building, e.g., “Do all the taps have water-saving dispensers?” or “Are the lights in the building LED?” In this sense, being in the PRBB has helped, because the building has many of these good practices already in place. How does the process work? First, you answer an assessment survey to see how the laboratory works. Next, they give you advice on what changes can be made to improve your practices. Once the changes have been made, they survey you again – each person involved in the lab is tested individually, to compare the practices of the different lab members. Finally, you are given a final score and a certification level based on the extent of progress in adopting best practices in the lab: Green, Platinum, Gold, Silver, or Bronze. How long does the whole process take and what did you do to achieve it? It took us about 9 months. After the initial assessment and receiving advice on things to change, we held monthly meetings in which we dealt with the different issues: community, recycling, shopping, chemicals, water… Up to 9 topics that we had been assessed on. In these meetings, we organized ourselves by dividing up the tasks of looking for information, etc. It was very good because everyone wanted to collaborate, the whole laboratory was very active by attending meetings, and there was a very good response. Can you give us some examples of things you have changed? One very interesting thing we did was a ‘waste audit‘ – which is to keep all the waste from the lab for a week and sort through it to see how to improve our waste management. The first thing you look at is whether the waste is going to the right place – e.g., sometimes things are thrown in the biohazard waste bin that don’t belong there. And that means an extra cost both environmentally and economically because the biohazard waste receives a much more complex treatment… It’s a very recommendable exercise because sometimes you are surprised by what you throw away! Then, among the things that go into biohazards, we looked at what plastics we could replace. Something we had already done, for example, was to replace the plastic bacterial growth tubes with glass ones, which can be autoclaved (sterilized) and reused. Another important thing, which seems obvious, is to check your reagents regularly to prevent them from expiring. In fact, this is a big issue; Sigma has found that 5% of the products they sell are thrown away without ever being used! Simply because they have expired. That’s why it’s essential to keep good records of what you have, use first the ones that are going to expire soon… and, above all, share reagents with others! And about the reagents, apart from the expiry date, they also look at what chemicals you use. This is something we often don’t think about – you use the default reagents, the ones that have always been used. But nowadays, “green chemistry” is very much in vogue, and this is all about replacing reagents that are harmful to the environment with less harmful substitutes. What about energy? The energy consumption of machinery is probably the one with the biggest impact. It is important to be aware of when they are switched on unnecessarily – apart from the fact that it also affects the lifetime of the machine! One thing we now do is rotate between lab members to ensure that machines are switched off at night, as well as check the maintenance of all machines. Interestingly, the machinery that wastes the most energy is laminar flow cabinets, because if they’re not closed, the cabinet keeps generating a flow continuously…the only thing you have to do is close it when you finish using it! Often, it’s not closed because of carelessness, laziness, or because you want it to be ready when you need it again. I know that some labs in the UK have put in automatic systems that detect when there are no people near and it closes automatically, saving a lot of energy. Adjusting the temperature of freezers is another big step that can have a big effect – plus you make the change once and then can forget about it! To do this, we first analyzed the efficiency of our freezer. With a go-pro camera, a student in our lab, Albert, took pictures of the freezer temperature every minute, to see how it varied when you opened it, how it recovered, etc. He then did an analysis of the temperature fluctuations and we saw that the biggest impact was the time you kept the door open, not so much the number of times you opened it. So, it was feasible for us to make the temperature change from -80°C to -75°C if we avoided keeping the door open too long. By improving practices, we were able to raise the temperature without putting our samples at risk, and now all MELIS-UPF freezers have made this change! Our next goal will be to go from -75°C to -70°C. Any other important subjects? Yes, water! In the building we use water with different degrees of purity: normal, distilled, and ultrapure water (Millipore). Sometimes ultrapure water is used, when in fact distilled water would be enough. And, as we have seen with waste, generating ultrapure water is much more expensive than generating distilled water (it takes 6-7 liters of decalcified water to generate 1 liter of ultrapure water, whereas 1 liter of distilled water requires only 3 liters of normal water). Until recently, we used to buy ultrapure water – but now we generate it right here at the PRBB, in Millipore machines that are on every floor of the building. And it’s the same quality as the purchased water. We eliminate the CO2 associated with transport, plastics, and also, at PRBB the water used to make ultrapure water is not wasted, but is reused for flushing toilets. Waste, reagents, machinery, water… What has been the main challenge? I thought it would be recruiting people from the group to collaborate, but that turned out to be the easiest! I’m super grateful to the whole team. The biggest challenge has perhaps been at the purchasing level because it does not depend only on us. For example, to reduce CO2 associated with transport, and parcels, we made the effort to wait so we could buy more things at once from the same supplier; we made sure we ordered them with enough time in advance not to run off… but then, even though we ordered everything at the same time, they sent it to us in three different packages! They assume that you want to have it as soon as possible, which is understandable. So, if they have one product and the other two are missing, they send you the first one. It’s a bit frustrating, but you just have to talk to the company and explain that you want them to send it all together, rather than as soon as they have some products. What does it mean for you to have this certification? Having the accreditation gives you a guide of what you have to change and how, because sometimes you have the will to do it but you don’t know where to start! My Green Lab categorizes everything and helps you step by step. It is also aligned with company policy. We are a young company, and our CEO, Avencia Sánchez-Mejías, was very keen to do things right from the beginning. She was the one who told me about the PRBB sustainability group as soon as I arrived at Integra. Finally, a tip for other groups or institutions that want to become more sustainable. First, join existing sustainability groups, such as the one at the PRBB, because there is a lot of knowledge and resources there. And we need people, because there are few of us who are very active, since you have to combine your laboratory work with improving sustainability, and not everyone has the same availability… Everything takes time, and we do it all on a voluntary basis. In my case, I am lucky to have the support of my boss to dedicate time to it. It also helps if you complete the My Green Lab Ambassador program– and that doesn’t take a lot of time! Are you interested in finding ways to make your lab more sustainable? Get in touch to learn more about My Green Lab Certification here.
Written by Ashley Davis - Global Sustainability Manager, Kimberly-Clark Professional Starting a waste reduction program or becoming a zero-waste organization may seem daunting. But it doesn’t have to be. This article offers a guide for creating a successful waste reduction program and the steps you need to take to get there. The Waste Walk: Exploring Your Organization’s Waste Landscape One of the best ways to begin your waste reduction journey is to conduct a waste walk or a series of waste walks, depending on the size of your organization. A well-planned waste walk can help you determine the opportunities for optimizing management of waste streams and figure out what can be diverted. A waste walk, also known as a Gemba Walk in the practice of Lean and Six Sigma, means taking the time to watch how a process is done and talking with those who do the job. At Kimberly-Clark Professional, we conduct waste walks to help shape our understanding of what’s going on within a facility and its operations. But don’t view it as a simple stroll through your facility. A waste walk should be properly planned and executed at different times throughout the day. Be sure to document findings during your waste walk by taking note of what the waste streams are composed of, why the waste is being generated, how and where the waste is being collected, and what form the waste is shipping out in. Last, be sure to take photos of your waste. Key items to observe and capture during a waste walk include:
Leadership and Stakeholder Alignment: Support and Collaboration A waste walk should be properly planned and supported by all stakeholders at the site. Make sure that leadership is involved from the start regarding the scope of work and key waste contributors. Align on outcomes and set timelines for mapping out your waste reduction plan. End users should also be included since they will ultimately be involved in implementing your waste reduction plan. Assessing and Prioritizing Solutions Once you have collected as much detail as possible from your waste walk, you can begin to assess and prioritize the work ahead. Your assessment should include:
Next, you need to determine solutions for your waste. Some facilities generate what we refer to as “simplistic” wastes, such as paper, cardboard, aluminum, and general trash. For these types of waste, a good initial step is to reach out to a local waste management organization to find out what solutions they can provide. See if your materials can be recycled or given a second life. For operations that generate a multitude of complex waste streams, such as rubber, fiber, PPE, electronics, or polymers, you may need to go down a different path. First, find a waste consultant who specializes in diverting these types of materials. Have them come in and assess ways to improve segregation, collection, and material flow to redirect wastes to new applications that are more composition specific. There are potential opportunities to receive revenue to help defray waste management fees. For example, if you’re using many different polymers at your site, a consultant can help you determine if your waste has value to a resin producer who can sell used materials into injection molding. If so, you can receive revenue here. Or, if you are recycling fiber, you could get paid for those materials, as well. For more complex streams, a waste consultant can help you evaluate all the services that are available. If you’re a national or international organization, strategic partnerships like these can help you maximize the benefits by addressing waste issues at multiple sites. And don’t forget to leverage your organization’s internal expertise. If you have in-house experts in waste and recycling, lean on them to help you assess the composition of your materials and your waste streams as well as specific recycling solutions. These experts can work directly with procurement to manage recycling relationships and outlets. This option is particularly valuable for manufacturing environments with waste streams that may command a higher value in the recycling market. A rule of thumb for prioritizing your waste solutions and investment opportunities: the larger the volume, the larger the value. Building Effective Partnerships Waste is an inevitable aspect of facility operations. If it is not managed properly, it can impact an entire site’s operations. Developing strong relationships with your facility teams and your waste and recycling partners is critical. They can help ensure support for your operations today as well as help you evolve your solutions for the future as new technologies come into the market and as waste streams evolve. When choosing a waste and recycling management partner, you should ensure that they:
In addition, you should require approval for all waste and recycling outlets prior to any changes and specify that there will be no exporting of materials. Last, make sure your waste recycling partner provides you with a certificate of destruction. Remember that a waste and recycling journey takes time. You can’t get there all at once, nor can you do it alone. Choose partners who will assist you in your journey. This could include manufacturer-led initiatives for recycling certain consumables, such as PPE, and “middlemen” who will help provide your waste with a second life. Whatever you do, take your time, be thorough, and choose reputable partners with a proven and verifiable track record of success. Ashley Davis is Global Sustainability Manager for Kimberly-Clark Professional. For more information, visit www.KCProfessional.com.
For more information on waste reduction in the lab, check out My Green Lab’s AP Course on Waste. Please join us in welcoming Scott Weitze to the My Green Lab team! With an extensive background in manufacturing and sustainability, Scott recently signed on as Technical Program Director for the ACT Label. Originally from Massachusetts and residing on the island of Alameda in the Bay Area, Scott is a hiking and biking aficionado, can offer a great book recommendation (see below!), and will gladly agree to a friendly game of Boggle. Learn more about Scott, his interests, and his sustainability journey below! Please tell us a little bit about yourself & your background. I was raised in central Massachusetts by my parents, a Dean of Sciences at a local college and a high school AP Biology teacher, with a brother who is also now in the sciences. I went to the beautiful UMass at Amherst during the amazing John Calipari years (you can now reverse engineer how old I am), studied English and history for a while, switched to biochemistry and stayed for my MS in biochemistry, with a cool little project on yeast chromatin regulation. Eventually I made my way to California and an MS in molecular genetics, studying RNA splicing. I can quickly and effectively dissect the very, very, very tiny brains of fruit flies, and yet no one ever calls me a brain surgeon, which seems kind of unfair. I taught genetics and bioinformatics at UC Berkeley and SF State, and for seventeen years I ran the research and product development lab at Labcon, a company in the Bay Area that manufactures lab consumables made of p*****c. All kidding aside, Labcon did some really interesting and innovative things with manufacturing and sustainability, which is how I first got connected to My Green Lab. I brought hundreds of products through the auditing process for the US, EU, and UK ACT Labels, and got really into the details of the process. Oh, and my personal and professional life both seem to have evolved into a modern Green Industry Love Story. My wife Hillary owns a Bay Area mechanical engineering firm focused on HVAC, energy efficiency, and sustainability. And now I’m at My Green Lab, working on the ACT Label! I also used to run Nerd Nite, a monthly live stage and speaker show in Oakland that was exactly what you’d expect from the title. What is your role at My Green Lab? I’m the Technical Director for the ACT Program. Over the next several months My Green Lab is working on revisions to the ACT Label so it better reflects both the realities and the possibilities of sustainability in lab products. We’ll be working through a stakeholder consensus process with industry leaders from many different branches of the academic, biotech, and pharma industries to create a revised, rigorous, and improved ACT Label. The ACT Label is already great, and we think it can be even better! What inspires you to do the kind of work you do? Well, I live on a flat island that is three to nine feet above sea level, so it’s kind of critical that we fix this whole *gestures wildly at the sky, ocean, and ground* thing. The thing is, you couldn’t ask for a better group to make real progress on climate and sustainability issues than the people you’ll find in our industry! They’re smart, motivated, believe in the basic fact of climate change, and want to help. It’s also a perfect place to create technical breakthroughs that will be used in other industries. Doing great science and contributing to sustainability are not incompatible! Now we just. need. to. do. it. What are your personal sustainability goals? Never buy a plastic garbage bag again. (You are inevitably and somewhat unavoidably given plastic bags sometimes, and you can just save those and use them in the rare cases where they’re helpful.) We cut our water use way back with the California drought, and it’s been fine. Short showers aren’t all that bad. And my town has an excellent and progressive local electricity provider, but we still aggressively turn off the lights and anything else not in immediate use. I just realized I’ve been in my car two times in the last month, and that wasn’t even a goal. Good job by me! What are your hobbies outside of work? So, so stereotypically Northern Californian: I hike. I go to the beach even though it’s cold. I listen to music from bands that broke up fifteen years ago. I eat Mexican food and German pretzels. I ride my bike and drink good beer. (We are a fifteen minute or less bike ride from thirteen breweries.) I split SF Giants season tickets with friends and we watch a lot of baseball and basketball. I am a friendly, competitive, and good* player of many board games, like Wingspan, Patchwork, Hogwarts Battle, Lost Cities, Jaipur, and Seven Wonders Duel. I do some things to help my local government. *Fine, I am also like 5 wins and 6,527 losses vs. my wife in Boggle. And I am actually pretty good at Boggle! What are your favorite books / movies?
Bill Bryson books remain adorable. Anthony Doerr is awesome. From many years ago, Mutants by Armand Marie Leroi is something everyone should read. Carter Beats the Devil is a perfect novel. Richard Russo is a great novelist. Bill James made me think about a lot of things in a different way. I’ll pretend I’m highbrow by noting The Godfather(s) and The Prestige are amazing. Out of Sight and Casablanca, also great. But Wedding Crashers, Elf, and the Bournes are infinitely re-watchable. Do they teach perfectly crafted movies like Back to the Future, My Cousin Vinny, and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels in film school? They should. Ummm, I have watched some things since 2006. The Great was hilarious. So was American Vandal. And we’ve seen every Modern Family like ten times! Where do you call home? We live on the delightful island of Alameda, just off the coast of Oakland in San Francisco Bay. Great weather, great beer, great parks, great beaches, great bike trails, great public ferry boats, and just a really great place to live! |