GOING GREEN–WHAT DOES A SUSTAINABLE LAB LOOK LIKE?

BY CAROLINE WOOD

From gloves and gels to pipette tips and petri dishes: labs are notorious for the amount of waste they generate as well as the energy they consume. But can researchers reduce this without affecting the quality and reproducibility of their work? To find out, Caroline Wood took a tour of the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology at the University of Oxford. Here, the Department’s dedicated Green Group have shown that even small actions can add up to make a big difference on the environmental impact of lab research.

January 2020, the group’s 20–30 members are diverse—ranging from PhD students and professors to admin staff to facility managers—but they are united in their commitment to explore all possible ways of reducing the Department’s environmental impact.

“For a long time, we have had a drive to reduce the resource and energy footprint of our research,” says Saroj. “So, during the period when we started returning to the labs after the COVID-19 lockdowns, we took the opportunity to completely reassess our working practices.”