Did you know that laboratories consume 10X more energy and 4X more water than commercial office space and produce an estimated 6.1 U.S. tons of plastic waste annually? (1) While these statistics are worrying, there is hope.
There’s no denying that the environmental footprint of the life sciences industry is huge. With heavy reliance on single-use plastics thanks to their ease and accessibility, researchers no longer use glass as their material of choice. Despite the fact that glass still has utility within research, the shift to single-use plastics has grown dramatically over the past decades due to the inherent benefits1 Excitingly, a new study shares evidence on ways to reduce these impacts with labware.
Committing to Carbon Neutrality
Understanding the full carbon footprint of consumable usage is increasingly important as many universities, scientific institutions, and biotechs commit to carbon neutrality. To be sustainable, researchers have been taking steps and discovering new ways without compromising scientific progress or the purity of lab results.(2)
Interestingly, no carbon footprint assessment has been conducted to explore the differences between single-use plastics and reusable glass in a laboratory setting – until now.(2)
It’s Not whether it’s glass or plastic That matters most
A long-time lab sustainability debate has been addressed in a recent study that analyzed the CO2 equivalent (CO2e) footprint of utilizing single-use plastics and re-use of glass or plastic devices.
Researchers evaluated four commonly used consumables for mammalian cell and bacterial culture and determined those re-use scenarios resulted in a significant reduction in CO2e footprint up to 11-fold. The results also showed that re-use had comparable or much lower running costs even when including salaries of technical staff. The researchers concluded that re-use of items can result in substantially lower carbon footprints, regardless if the components were glass or plastic. (2)
What’s more, the team found that plastic as a material was not the factor that increased carbon footprint compared to glass items. Rather, it is the single-use nature of the plastic. Single-use items require de novo production, which accounts for approximately 99% of the footprint. In comparison, re-using items means the need for de novo production is greatly reduced, thus lessening the overall carbon footprint. Although re-using labware requires energy to clean, wash and dry, this still resulted in a lower carbon footprint than the production of new labware. (2) However, it’s important to note that the special cleaning products and detergents used in the process may not have been captured in the overall footprint. Additional studies should also include assessments of the footprint of these detergents.(2)
What You Can Do to Reduce Your Carbon Footprint
Given that labs need to rely on some unavoidable single-use items, facilities should find a balance between cost, environmental impact, and contamination by reusing items when feasible but having single-use ones available for certain limited uses. For this to occur, transparent reporting on embodied carbon of manufacturing consumables would permit purchasers of consumables to better compare outcomes.(2)
Another area that research labs should consider is the design of the labs themselves. Architects may look to reduce the sizes of autoclaves and washing facilities as one way to reduce carbon emissions. But the findings from this study suggest the opposite.
When the capacity of a facility to decontaminate, wash, and re-use materials is reduced, their overall carbon footprint and overall costs actually increase. When designing new facilities, long-term capacity requirements that may be needed for on-site re-use should be considered. In addition, in many cases, the savings of having a central wash facility in-house would scale up as more items are re-used.
But it doesn’t just stop there. Until recently, many companies focused only on reducing energy consumption and improving efficiency in their own facilities. A question that begs to be asked – is your company also responsible for the emissions throughout your specific value chain?
Scope 3 emissions, also referred to as value chain emissions, are indirect greenhouse gas emissions that aren’t counted in Scope 1 and 2 reporting, such as direct carbon emissions from sources you control and indirect emissions from your company’s use of energy that is bought (i.e., electricity, HVAC). (3)
Scope 3 emissions come from your supplier as well as consumers of your products and these can often account for the majority of your company’s total emissions. Measuring your Scope 3 emissions can help identify suppliers who are sustainability leaders. By engaging with them and supporting the implementation of sustainability initiatives, you can improve efficiency and cut costs in your supply chain, giving you a competitive advantage and increased margins. (3)
Conclusion
In order to achieve net-zero emissions in research laboratories, it is clear that there is a need for systematic carbon footprint assessment and implementation of re-use strategies. This study provides an important foundation for future work and indicates that change is necessary to mitigate the environmental impact of laboratory research. Reusing laboratory consumables can pave the way for carbon-neutral institutes.(2)
In the world of science, there are many ways to reduce your environmental footprint. Researchers can change the way they use plastics in everyday experiments by emphasizing multi-use versus single-use products. They can also measure their Scope 3 footprint and identify ways to reduce indirect emissions. When it is unfeasible to reuse products, scientists can partake in recycling initiatives to help offset the less eco-friendly processes. (1)
References
1. https://www.labmanager.com/insights/taking-action-toward-more-sustainable-science-26468
2. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.01.14.476337v1
Are you doing your part to be more sustainable in your research, reusing lab equipment when you can? Leave us a comment below and let us know how you’re reducing your environmental impact.
