Press

Spring cleaning isn’t just for your house. Now through July, UGA Green Labs is hosting the annual Freezer Challenge, a contest encouraging researchers to clean out and maintain ultra-low cold storage units.

All scientists have one goal in mind: to make the world a better place. They work tirelessly in labs and in the field, collecting samples, testing experiments, and applying theories. Throughout the process, however, they’re inevitably left with large amounts of waste. It was something that began to concern Star Scott.

UGA’s Green Labs program earned the 2023 Outstanding Green Labs Program Award from the International Institute for Sustainable Laboratories (I2SL).

The University of Georgia’s research enterprise has contributed to the greater good for more than 160 years, and now, that good science is getting even better. UGA’s Green Lab Program is helping laboratories on campus continue solving the world’s grand challenges while reducing their own environmental footprints.

As a lab manager making purchasing decisions, you may receive push-back from upper management to find ways to reduce spending costs and find less expensive alternatives. But how can you balance upfront costs with the organization’s sustainability efforts?

Many individuals are eager to improve their lab’s carbon footprint and drive a culture of sustainability, but often face challenges in making real change within their organization.

With the 2022 Freezer Challenge underway and Earth Day approaching soon (April 22), now is the time to take a step back and look at the preventative maintenance and sustainability measures that are currently in place in your laboratory for cold storage units.

To date, most laboratory sustainability efforts have focused on reducing the environmental impact of science and making those efforts economically viable. Though these efforts have been valuable, true sustainability should also consider people and communities impacted by the research enterprise, and drive changes for how researchers conduct science.

While safety and sustainability offices in higher education institutions are often seen as two separate entities with completely separate charges, in reality they are two sides of a single coin.

Mauricio Urbina was trying to save the planet on the day he realized he was simultaneously destroying it. A biologist who studies the bodies of fish and other sea creatures, Urbina was working on a project to understand what happens to crabs that eat tiny particles of plastic waste thrown out by careless humans.

The standard in ultralow temperature freezers is –80° Celsius. It’s so common that many scientists even call them –80 freezers. Does that make –80 °C a magic number?

Adding sustainability such as reducing energy and waste to existing laboratories makes today’s science greener and sets the tone for tomorrow’s scientists.

The humming motors, flashing lights and heat give any scientist an idea of how much energy a lab uses, but it’s just a general feeling that it’s a lot. In 2015, Moira Hafer, a sustainability analyst at Stanford University in California, reported that lab equipment used more electricity — 50% of the total — than any other type of equipment on the campus. 1 That makes lab equipment a key target in saving energy.