Making your lab safe and sustainable: start today

Sustainability, a key word these days. The laboratory world can sometimes lag behind in this area. We spoke with Marit de Kort, affiliated with Green Labs NL. This is an initiative to make laboratories more sustainable. How important is sustainability? And how can you make your laboratory safely more sustainable today?

Sharing knowledge, brainstorming, offering tools

De Kort is currently doing her PhD at the Netherlands Cancer Institute. Out of activism, she joined Green Labs NL. A Dutch sustainability initiative based on the British example. And the model LEAF: Laboratory Efficiency Assessment Framework. “That offers a framework to perform your laboratory work as sustainably as possible. That arose from the idea: things can also be done differently in the laboratory world, more sustainably.”

Green Labs NL is not a physical laboratory but a community. “So you seek out other scientists who also want to make their work more sustainable. You share knowledge with each other, offer each other tools, you can brainstorm about issues you encounter; that's how we really build a community. You become a movement of people who say: we pay attention to our energy consumption and our waste in the lab, we do that better.”

More sustainable yourself

“I myself am very involved in fundamental biology at the Netherlands Cancer Institute. You examine the cells. Take a look: how does everything actually work? You are in the lab every day, to grow cells. You have to work very sterile. That involves a lot of single-use plastic. For example, the gloves you always wear to protect yourself from chemicals. In addition, you have to back up a lot of data, which causes a lot of energy consumption.”

“Of course safety is very important. But we often use gloves when it is not necessary at all, purely out of habit. And you use many things out of convenience, or because you do not know what they consume. A freezer in the lab is quickly set to -80 degrees. Then it consumes as much as an entire household. If you set it to -70 degrees, that also works fine for many substances.”

There are many ways in which you can make your own operations more sustainable, without compromising on safety. “If you organize your actions more efficiently, you may need one pipette or culture dish less. And don't turn on your autoclave for everything, save up and save water that way.” There are also gains to be made in the area of energy. De Kort: “We are used to leaving many devices on at night. Turn off what can be turned off. But also pay attention to the light and the heating. You don't leave that on all night at home either. It is important that companies think: how can we make things more sustainable? At the UMC they have already hired someone for that. A great step.”

According to De Kort, one of the biggest challenges is waste processing. “Many waste processors do not want to process lab waste because they are afraid for their safety. It is chemical, full of bacteria or other strange organisms. There is a law that this type of waste does not end up in society. That law is of course very important, but now there is little room for manoeuvre. The rules are very strict. These are also things that we look at with Green Labs NL.” One thing is certain: every little bit helps on the way to a sustainable laboratory world.