Background

Laboratory research environments are inherently resource-intensive, often consuming significant amounts of water, energy, chemicals, and materials. In this lecture, we explore practical steps you can take to reduce the environmental footprint of the vital scientific work you carry out every day. I wish you the best of luck with your research, and I hope these insights support you in making your laboratory practices more sustainable and environmentally friendly.

 Water & Energy

Deionised and ultrapure water are vital for many lab processes, but the purification of water isn’t 100% efficient. It can take 3 litres of tap water to produce 1 litre of deionised water, and 5 litres to produce 1 litre of ultrapure water. Using purified water only when necessary and using tap water for general use can result in huge water savings.

Fume hoods and ultralow temperature freezers are typically the largest energy consumers in laboratories. Maintenance tasks like defrosting and cleaning freezers (including checking if -70°C would suffice) and  c[PS1] hecking for leaks and broken equipment should be regularly carried out. A faulty solenoid valve on an autoclave can leak more than a million gallons of water over the course of a year! Join the free international freezer challenge that runs from 1 January to end of June every year, for a fun way to make sure you use your ULF correctly.

Closing fume hood sashes when not in use, using only the ice you need, running autoclaves and dishwashers only when full, switching off equipment and lights at the end of the day, and even tidying up the emails and data you’re storing can add up to significant improvements in water and energy sustainability.

 Waste

The average laboratory is full of single-use plastics and it can be easy to default to them rather than more sustainable alternatives. However, plastic Petri dishes could be swapped to glass, as could Pasteur pipettes and plate spreaders. Metal inoculation loops are another simple swap for their plastic counterpart, and disposable weighing boats can be replaced with paper or weighing directly into the vessel. Consider whether you need gloves for what you’re doing or whether you could re-use a pair.

Buying bulk pipette tips in bags for the whole lab and then distributing them into boxes generates less plastic waste than buying tips already boxed. Centrifuge counter-weights can be kept and stored near the centrifuge to minimise the number of tubes used and disposed of.

Many common lab plastics (polypropylene, polyethylene, polyethylene terephthalate) are recyclable, but they need to be sorted and kept separate from other waste. Recycling services for lab waste are becoming more common, so consider implementing a system in your lab.

Non-plastic waste can also be reduced. Before buying fresh lab coats for new lab members, check whether spares are already available that can be laundered and re-used.  

Chemicals

The production, use, and disposal of laboratory chemicals all have environmental impact. Reduction, substitution and appropriate disposal are ways that this impact can be lowered, and chemical use made more sustainable.

Before carrying out a large-scale experiment, conduct literature searches or even perform modelling/simulations to come up with a reliable plan. Do small-scale pilot experiments to see whether your plan works in practice. In the event that things don’t go to plan, you won’t have wasted chemicals, reagents and other consumables. Sharing chemicals with other lab users and keeping an up-to-date inventory will reduce over-buying and limit the number of chemical and reagents that expire before they’re used.

When planning your experiments and carrying out risk assessments, consider whether there are alternatives available for the more hazardous or less sustainable reagents. For example, there are techniques where the hazardous solvent dichloromethane (DCM) can be swapped for the much safer ethyl acetate. Online guides can help guide you on suitability, safety and sustainability of solvent selection. Sometimes you may not be able to switch to a different chemical but could switch to a different source instead. Some suppliers offer reagents produced from renewable feedstocks e.g. butanol derived from sugars instead of fossil fuels. Even certain techniques like chromatography could be swapped out for less chemical-intensive alternatives. Investigate other options available to you and test them – maybe you’ll discover your own sustainable switch!

Laboratory chemical waste is usually disposed of via incineration of landfill. By using separate waste streams in the lab (e.g. hazardous vs. non-hazardous, biological vs. chemical), you can ensure that chemicals are disposed of in the most appropriate way and limit negative impacts to the environment. Often, empty containers are re-used for waste. These should be kept closed to prevent evaporation (even if kept in a fume hood!) and labelled accurately.

Key reading

General

Freese T, Kat R, Lanooij SD, Böllersen TC, De Roo CM, Elzinga N, et al. A guidebook for sustainability in laboratories. ChemRxiv. 2024; https://chemrxiv.org/doi/full/10.26434/chemrxiv-2023-g3lmq-v4

Waste

Weber, P. M., Michelsen, C., & Kerou, M. (2025). What’s in our bin?: Labs kick off and demand the transition towards a circular economy for lab plastics. EMBO Reports, 26(2), 297–302. https://www.embopress.org/doi/full/10.1038/s44319-024-00360-x

Energy

Hafer, M. Quantity and electricity consumption of plug load equipment on a university campus. Energy Efficiency 10, 1013–1039 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12053-016-9503-2

 International freezer challenge. https://freezerchallenge.mygreenlab.org/landing

Water

Best Practices Guide Water Efficiency in Laboratories, USA EPA https://www.epa.gov/system/files/documents/2022-06/ws-I2SL-Laboratory-Water-Efficiency-Guide.pdf

Chemicals

My Green Lab – Green Chemistry Discussion Guide https://mygreenlab.sharepoint.com/:p:/s/CertificationResources/IQCiocK3pRHvTIMOt4id9iHhAatrGOgxhUYEStL8IbowYek?rtime=GVojGZwq3kg

ACS, research tool towards greener chemical use (including chemical selection guide and solvent selection tool) https://www.acs.org/green-chemistry-sustainability/research-innovation/research-tools.html

P. Dutta, A. McGranaghan, I. Keller, Y. Patil, N. Mulholland, V. Murudi, H. Prescher, A. Smith, N. Carson, C. Martin, P. Cox, D. Stierli, M. Boussemghoune, F. Barreteau, J. Cassayre and E. Godineau, Green Chem., 2022, 24, 3943–3956. https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2022/gc/d2gc00698g

Easy watch and fun way to learn about the 12 principles of green chemistry (12 videos): University of Toronto https://www.youtube.com/user/GreenChemUofT/videos