Sustainable Labs are No Longer an Oxymoron

7 FAS Labs Undergo Comprehensive Environmental Assessments

Based on a successful program at the University of California at Santa Barbara, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) Green Labs Program has partnered with students to analyze science labs for resource conservation opportunities. Five students with strong backgrounds in laboratory science are now working in paid positions as Lab Sustainability Representatives, gathering lab-specific best practices and spreading the word about how to save energy, resources, and money in similar labs.

So far, seven labs have already begun lab sustainability assessments, with several others on a wait list for upcoming assessments.

The program has started with assessments of labs that are already taking many steps to save resources. One common thread in these labs is that they are all very well organized, and have a sense of pride in the way they run their operations.

Zhongxing Chen, manager of Professor Charles Langmuir’s lab in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, boasts of his ability to reuse pipette tips that have been used for specific purposes in his clean room, despite the fact that they are measuring trace or ultra-trace elemental concentrations and isotopic compositions in very small mineral samples.

Lab member Su Gao, who is herself very interested in resource efficiency, playfully recalls a time when Chen asked her to clean the clean room counters, and had only disposable clean room wipes available.

“He said, ‘You can use these, but please don’t use too many’,” Su recalls.

Several of the Lab Sustainability Representatives have witnessed a wide range of positive steps labs are taking to mitigate their environmental impact. After working with lab member Emily Eames to assess Assistant Professor Theodore Betley’s lab in the chemistry department, lab rep Dave Boudreau said, “Emily was awesome to work with and really into the program. She described her lab as being very green-motivated and it showed. The more I get into this project, the more potential I think it has to have a huge impact at Harvard.”

Lab Manager Karla Sartor, in Assistant Professor Anne Pringle’s lab in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, has already made a number of concrete changes in response to the initial assessment visit, including changing the settings on their PCR machines to save energy and plugging a number of balances and stirrers into a power strip to cut down standby load. Lab Sustainability Reps are also gathering data in Pringle’s lab on the efficiency losses related to frost build-up on scientific freezers.

Ultimately, the FAS Lab Sustainability Reps aspire not only to save energy and resources, but also to become a resource to the FAS research community, identifying beneficial practices. Given the wide range of scientific research across FAS, we have our work cut out for us.

To schedule an assessment for your lab contact Philip Kreycik (philip_kreycik@harvard.edu).