ECOMAPPINGTM – An easy way to make your lab work more sustainable

Dr. Kerstin Hermuth-Kleinschmidt — Mon, 13 Jun 2022 04:00:00 +0000

Being environmentally friendly as a scientist … mission impossible?

We are saving energy, buy plastic-free and go to work by bike. But when we enter the lab, it is difficult to work environmentally friendly.

It’s the lab building alone that consumes 3 – 5 times more energy and water than an office building
Our samples lie in -80 °C-freezers which use as much energy as a single-family house
We use single-use plastic to make sure that our samples are safe and our experiments work. But this way of working generates a lot of waste: 5.5 million tons of plastic waste have been generated in all life sciences labs worldwide in 2014, and this number has certainly not gone down, …

In the last years, a lot of people working in the labs got aware of this massive resource consumption and thought about ways to decrease the environmental footprint of labs. There are now a lot of checklists and tips on the internet like this guide from the iGEM-goes-green group, these checklists from the UCL, these tips from mygreenlab or these from the labconscious website.

But every start is difficult and every lab is different. A tip which is applicable for one lab does not necessarily work for the lab next door. And there are other concerns like:

These recommendations do not apply to us
Our methods are established and cannot be changed.
We already optimized all our routines – no idea what else can be altered

A way to overcome these challenges and to start your individual way to a sustainable lab is the so-called ECOMAPPING-Method.

The ECOMAPPING-method: A practical way for every lab

This method was originally developed for small and middle-sized enterprises (SMEs) wanting to implement an environmental management system according to EMAS. But it can also be applied to labs – with some specific adaptions – and focuses on the environmental impacts in your lab related to

Waste
Water and wastewater
Energy
Emissions (which also includes noise emissions)
Storage (e.g., of chemicals)
Risks and safety
Chemicals and consumables

With the ECOMAPPING-method, you investigate these environmental aspects directly on site with your team.

And here is how it works

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You need a person, better a team of 2 or 3 persons, for every aspect

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You need a floor plan of your labs plus the rooms associated with your lab (like storage rooms…)

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You need a camera (smartphone or tablet) for documentation

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You get a questionnaire as guidance for your aspect

Let’s have a look into this lab

All the teams go through the lab focussing only on their aspect and writing down on to the floor plan what they notice, what is striking them and which action should be taken.

The actions are immediately prioritized into:

Priority A

Change immediately

Priority B

Change as soon as possible

Priority C

Check and change if needed

Do not forget to make photographs as this is your documentation!

A checklist will help each team gather ideas on what they should look out for. The energy team will get questions like:

Do we know the power consumption of our devices?
Are the devices in standby mode or off?
Do we know the heating times?
When are the devices usually started? (Directly in the morning or adapted to the heating-up times).
Do the devices have a high heat load?
Are they in the right place to dissipate the heat?

This is what the teams noticed in the lab

And this is what they noted in their individual floor plan (their ECOMAPs)

Discuss and get into action

All these results are compiled and the findings recorded in the individual ecomaps are then discussed. There may be overlaps – this is not bad, but desirable as it shows the different environmental impacts a routine, tool or method could have.

Discuss open questions and challenges. Evaluate all ideas for feasibility, environmental impact, cost or impact on your daily work.

Finally, create a joint assessment of your ideas and prioritise them together.

Create an action plan that includes the following:

Concrete actions
Budget (or not, because many measures cost nothing)
Deadlines by which the measures are to be implemented
Responsibilities
Resubmission to review your measures

What could be your result?

The team formulated the following action plan:

No more use of aluminium in autoclaving bacterial cultures. Instead, metal sealing caps are used.

The autoclaves were running at 134 °C, but the team found that 121 °C was sufficient: From now on, the autoclaves will be run at 121 °C, and stickers remind people to only run an autoclave when it is fully loaded.

Stickers on the instruments remind people to switch them off when not in use to avoid stand-by.

Since cooling with ice requires a lot of water and energy to produce ice, alternatives are being tested.

A concept for sharing equipment is under development.

Guidelines for sustainable procurement are being developed, sustainability labels such as ACT, EGNATON-CERT and Energy Star will be considered in the future.

These are just a few examples that can result from applying the ECOMAPPING method. And most of these actions do not cost anything.

To sum up – The ECOMAPPING method …

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… can be applied to any lab, be it a molecular biology, chemistry or analytical laboratory

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… is easy to perform

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… comes with a simple documentation

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… raises awareness in your team as you see your lab with a different perspective

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… promotes teamwork

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… can be your first step to an environmental management system

Workshop Offer

Note: The Ecomapping method is based on the ecomapping/EMASeasy™ concept, which was originally developed by Heinz Werner Engel and is disseminated in German-speaking countries by WUQM Consulting.

Title Image: Testalize.me, www.unsplash.com, https://unsplash.com/photos/0jE8ynV4mis

Der Beitrag ECOMAPPING^TM – An easy way to make your lab work more sustainable erschien zuerst auf NIUB Nachhaltigkeitsberatung.

Why I’ve started a blog about sustainability in the life sciences

Dr. Kerstin Hermuth-Kleinschmidt — Wed, 22 Dec 2021 11:30:25 +0000

People who work in the lab know the saying: “Never change a running system”. If a method works, please do not change anything. Otherwise the results are no longer comparable – that’s absolutely right!

In my presentations and workshops, I regularly receive the following feedback: “What you’re showing is interesting and absolutely right, but we cannot really change our routines. Our methods are established. As an analytical laboratory we do not have much flexibility and we have to stick to prescribed test methods. We already do what’s feasible …” On the other hand, the consumption of resources is enormous: a laboratory building requires 3 – 5 times as much energy as a normal office building, freezers and fume hoods require on average as much energy as a single-family house, and a study from California in 2015 estimates that the consumption by laboratory equipment alone (without fume hoods!) in the laboratories requires as much energy as 230,000 households together – in terms of population, this corresponds to a medium-sized city, such as Freiburg.

The silver lining is that a lot is happening right now! Who would have thought a few years ago that there would be a label for environmentally friendly and sustainable devices or consumables? In the time since then, two labels for sustainable instruments and consumables have been established. And if you count the “energy star” for laboratory refrigerators and freezers from the USA, there are now even three sustainability labels on the market. And if you look around, you will see more and more “Green Lab” groups that are addressing the issue of sustainability. This is wh I’ve started this blog: I would like to further increase the visibility of the topic, show initiatives that are already implementing a great number of things today, and provide tips for everyday life. Because even small actions make a difference!

And because it’s not just the lab employees who contribute to more sustainability, but also the companies that provide solutions, I will keep adding one or two articles on how sustainability can be implemented in companies. Stay tuned …

Der Beitrag Why I’ve started a blog about sustainability in the life sciences erschien zuerst auf NIUB Nachhaltigkeitsberatung.