How are Science Labs becoming more Environmentally Friendly?

When it comes to tackling the biggest issues that society collectively faces, science laboratories are the engine room in which the brightest minds and the best technology come together to provide the solutions that everyone is asking for.

This is not easy work – it takes years of painstaking study and commitment just to reach a position in a science laboratory, and once you get there, it’s a case of performing highly important, highly complex scientific work on a daily basis.

One of the critically important areas of study that scientists both in and outside of laboratories give their attention to is the climate crisis. It’s their studies of global temperatures, weather systems, and the wildlife in and amongst them that provide the data that so clearly shows us how the activities of humans are causing ecosystems to collapse.

This means that when it comes to the energy output of the science labs themselves, it’s within their duty and their own understanding that they should aim to keep carbon emissions and harmful waste to a minimum in order to minimize their own impact on the environment.

Read on to find out more about how science laboratories are struggling with the problem of high energy output and how they are battling their own energy-intensive processes to reduce their impact on the environment.

Reducing energy consumption

The first and most important step in scientific laboratories weakening their impact on the environment is through the reduction in energy consumption.

Despite the fact these laboratories are working to remedy the effects of climate change, they end up having a proportionally far greater impact on the environment than a standard working environment due to the fact that the work undertaken is energy-intensive with lots of advanced machinery used.

For example, a freezer in a standard family household looks to cool contents to a temperature of around –16 degrees C, while specialized lab freezers can require temperatures to be as low as –80 degrees C – and these industrial freezers use enormous amounts of energy, in the range of 65x the amount as the household freezer.

It’s also down to lab technology manufacturers such as malvernpanalytical.comto reduce the carbon footprint of their devices.

Recycling more materials

Whether it’s waste material leftover from studies and experiments or the use of plastic materials that are either single-use, hard to break down, or both, there are many waste items coming out of scientific laboratories that are difficult to dispose of or require special disposal techniques.

Particularly when it comes to Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) such as masks, gloves, glasses, and faceshields, science has a real problem with single-use plastic, with some scientists observing that their labs use up to 60kgs of non-recyclable plastic material as a minimum on a yearly basis.

Encouraging a change in culture

Ensuring that scientific labs everywhere are doing all they can to reduce their collective impact on the environment is a case of getting the message across to individual scientists themselves. Not only is it important for labs and their authorities to cut back on wastage and energy usage wherever possible, but as the ones with the power to make the change, it sets an example to everyone in society that reducing the presence of plastic or energy usage in your daily