The Carbon Neutral Laboratory: Making the leap to carbon neutral research achievable with low-energy synthesis, as proposed by the Royal Society of Chemistry 2022
In its 2022 report, the Royal Society of Chemistry found that 79% of the researchers surveyed knew that their lab activities affected the environment, and 84% wanted to reduce the adverse environmental impact of their work. Another 63% said that they had made changes in the previous two years to reduce that impact, or that of their research groups or departments.
Before scientists make any changes to their protocols, they should be confident that their results won’t be affected. If you’re required to use 20 litres of solvent or 20 pipette tips for your research, you should do that. “You should not feel bad about conducting more experiments if it means your results become more significant and reproducible.”
Scientists at the Carbon Neutral Laboratory are encouraged to reduce their use of highly toxic solvents, including chemicals that 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.
Despite some setbacks, sustainability is also leading to savings for the Carbon Neutral Laboratory, a one-of-a-kind facility at the University of Nottingham, UK. Most of the funding for the lab came from the multinational pharmaceutical company, according to the reported cost of $20.8 million. The building, powered partly by solar arrays and a biofuel heat system, is designed to consume less than 40% of the power used by a typical lab of a similar size. The chemist Peter Licence says the lab is paying back carbon used in construction by not buying electricity from the grid. “The whole concept is an experiment.”
It will take a bit of time for the lab to live up to its name. The goal was for net carbon neutral within 25 years, enough time to allow for energy savings to offset the energy required for its construction. There are a few technical problems with some of the electrical and mechanical units that are run onbiomass, so they are slightly behind target. I am pretty sure that we will be carbon neutral by the 25 year time frame. But where we sit right now, I would say that we’re probably three, four or five years behind that payback schedule.”
In some sectors, this awareness is turning into actions, says Thomas Freese, one of the authors of the RSC Sustainability report and a PhD student in green chemistry. Funding for research is being raised and scientists are changing their protocols to make the research more efficient and sustainable. “It’s an intellectual grassroots movement,” Freese says.
Push a few buttons can be just as simple as the next step. The temperature of the freezers in the Babraham’s labs was raised from 80 C to 70 C. Some researchers warned that, if the freezers ever malfunctioned, the samples would spoil faster without that extra 10 °C cushion. Martin Howes, the sustainable-labs co-ordinator at the University of Cambridge in the UK, reported that the scientists there made the adjustment without any issues. She was reassured by the researchers who said their own experiences with 70 C freezers had been reported to My Green Lab. The move reduced energy consumption by 20% without affecting the frozen samples.
Fume hoods are also prime targets in energy-conservation efforts. A typical household uses 3.5 times more energy per year than a typical fume hood does. It costs more than US$4,500 per year for a Harvard University lab to use a fume hood. When you close the window at the front of the hood, you can cut the airflow rate by two-thirds. The closing of fume hoods at Harvard reduced energy costs by almost $200,000 a year.
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. “We don’t have the staff, lab space or budget for projects to take on this additional workload, so plastic single-use consumables have become the de facto solution,” he says.
My Green Lab: A Roadmap to Scientific Sustainability in the U.S., and an Empirical Study of the Effects of the Environmental Impact on Biomedical Research
Durgan says that if the research results are unreliable, then any cutbacks in the name of sustainable will lead to more waste. “The more effort we make to be sure that our data is robust and reproducible, the less collective time and resources are going to be wasted by the international research community trying to chase or follow up those findings,” she says.
Such words might offer comfort to scientists who are concerned about sustainability, but not every product lives up to the billing. For some reason, it has been seen as acceptable in the science industry to put a green leaf on a product without being sure if it is real or not.
In a bid to improve clarity, My Green Lab has created a database of independently generated Environmental- impact scores for over 1200 lab supplies, from pipettes and solvent to freezers and mass spectrometers. The full life cycle of a product, from its manufacturing impact to use of energy and water, packaging and final disposal, are taken into account when calculating the scores.
My Green Lab also offers a road map to scientific sustainability through a certification programme that requires labs to meet certain standards and benchmarks on the use of energy, water and supplies. Those that want to go through the process have to pay a fee, and it is currently between $500 and $4,000 for academic labs. So far, around 1,200 labs in 47 countries have been certified. Success candidates are awarded a wall plaque. A lab needs to go through the certification process again if it wishes to stay certified after two years.
Durgan says funding agencies are the only entities with the power to bring change. “People who might not have been so motivated from an environmental perspective will now have a strategic reason to be more sustainable, because funding is going to depend on it.”
He thinks the US National Institute of Health need to follow the example of the Wellcomes in the drive for sustainable science. TheNIH is an influential player in the United States, he says. “We need leadership from that institution to drive change through the broader academic industry.”
The office of extramural research doesn’t require lab certification, but does consider the scientific environment during peer review and monitor compliance with all requirements post award.
Making the switch from plastic to glass: A case study of UWE Bristol and how a UK university has formalized a collaboration with RecycleLab
Individual labs have reported even more impressive results. In order to achieve annual savings of $16,000, Jane Kilcoyne decided to turn up the temperature of freezers, close the fume hoods when possible, and order only what is needed.
In order to reduce their reliance on single-use plastic, university operators around the world have made various commitments. University College London and the Australian National University both have pledges to be free of single-use plastic by the end of the century. The University of California, Berkeley, has committed to meeting the same target by 2030.
Most of the reagents for the preparation of libraries and DNA/RNA extracts are packaged in plastic back in the lab. The challenges for lab safety due to the fact that glass is more likely to break accidentally and create a hazardous spill, could come from substituting some of the 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. Around 10% of the plastic waste generated by the college each year is recycled through this partnership.
The authors noted that it would take a lot of changes to adopt their practices. To make sure biological Decontamination is taken care of, a metal loop used to plate bacteria needs to be heated and plastic containers used to store chemicals need to be transported to a specialized facility for cleaning.
Broadbent says that times are changing. Through a project funded by King’s College, her team, along with an undergraduate student working on the project, is developing a business case for switching to glass containers. Broadbent says, that while using glass is a thing of the past, it now requires careful consideration of costs, labour, safety and materials.
The destruction of food and flies at high temperatures creates a lot of carbon emissions. This issue is important for the team because of the growing environmental impact.
