| The scientific instruments market, including all its innovations, was estimated at an astonishing $40 billion in 2023.

When it comes to sustainability, approximately 50% of a laboratory’s electricity consumption is attributable to their instrumentation Similarly, billions of liters of reagents are required annually to run instruments.

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Surprisingly, even in the high-performance segment, significant efficiency differences exist. That means you can become more sustainable by saving reagents, reducing maintenance, and optimizing time when choosing the right instruments.

Let us review some inspiring examples to provide you with a sense of what could be of help to you:

Mass Spectrometry

Some MS systems use nitrogen to remove solvent from ions in the ionization source. More efficient source designs and optimized desolvation processes can reduce this consumption.

For instance, Waters’ ESI mass spectrometers require a gas flow of 20–23 L/min, compared to other systems that use up to 77 L/min. In fact, older instruments consume liquid nitrogen even in “standby” mode.

At first glance, these numbers might seem negligible, but consider that in core facilities, instruments typically run for 8 hours each working day, 200 workdays à year (=48000 hours):

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    > Traditional Operation: 77 L/min × 48,000 min = 3,696,000 L

    > Sustainable Operation: 23 L/min × 48,000 min = 1,140,800 L

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In many industrial settings, instruments operate 24/7, enabling more than 23 Million liters of Nitrogen savings!

On Top, modern instrument come with vacuum pumps that achieve comparable pumping capacities at only 500 watts, whereas traditional oil pumps consume between 1,500 and 3,000 watts.

High-Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC)

In HPLC, several innovations have emerged. For example, solid-core particles or halving column length and particle size enable more efficient separations, reducing run times by up to 50%.

= This also means 50% less solvent use and energy consumption compared to conventional machines.

However, one of the most exciting advancements exists in column diameter.

While conventional LC-UV instruments still use 4.6-mm inner diameter (i.d.) columns, switching to 2.1-mm i.d. columns can reduce solvent consumption by up to 80%. Although extra column dispersion or internal backpressure can become a challenge, even more forgiving alternatives with 3.0-mm i.d. columns save about 60% of mobile phase use.

Considering that approximately 150 million kilograms of methanol and acetonitrile are used annually, these changes could save 50 million kilograms—the equivalent weight of 10 Eiffel Towers!

Investigating Protein Interactions – SPR

Beyond time and reagents use, efficient handling of samples is key. Older SPR (Surface Plasmon Resonance) instruments that enable the study of affinity of two ligands require approximately 150 µL of sample. Newer models, such as the Alto, reduce this amount to just 2 µL while requiring lower protein concentrations overall.

Although the concrete sustainability of this innovation has to be judged based on Life Cycle Analysis data, this instrument runs on DMF-powered cartridges, meaning it has no internal fluidics. As a result, maintenance and repair requirements for this part are eliminated altogether.

Imagine the reduced stress when less sample volume is needed, and expensive service calls are avoided—not to mention the lower carbon footprint associated with fewer service expert visits.

How This Knowledge Helps You:

Reagent use, running time, and sample preparation requirements are often undervalued when searching for new instruments. Importantly, faster processing speeds have compounding effects: reduced energy use, less heat generation, and therefore lower HVAC demands.

To evaluate the sustainability of equipment, consider these 5 core factors:

• Sufficiency & Breadth of Performance
• Operation Efficiency (e.g., energy consumption and heat generation)
• Type and Volume of Required Reagents (including sample preparation)
• By-products and Waste Generation (from reagents and samples)
• Embodied Carbon of the Materials

A personal tip: think outside the box. Don’t opt for the standard, instead choose what benefits you. For example, nowadays, very short 10×2.1 mm cartridge columns in HPLC systems are available. They save up to 88% of running time and 70% of solvent. However, they come with a lower resolution. If you need peaks as sharp as possible this is nothing for you. If you use an LC-MS system, broader peaks are not an issue, however, saving time, money and waste is.

| Ultimately, the question is whether we want to embrace optimization or stick with the conventional.

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You want to learn more about how to make laboratories sustainable by enhancing workflows?
Then sign up for our weekly “Sustainability Snack” that outlines case studies, helpful tools and step-by-step guides for free.

The university of Cambridge spent approximately 19 million pounds on energy in 2018. On average, about 60-75% of all energy is consumed by laboratories.

Therefore, these steps, can significantly cut down on energy consumption while maintaining high standards of research and operation:

 1. Develop a Comprehensive Energy Plan

• Schedule Machine Usage: Create a clear plan for when to turn machines on and off. Coordinate with your lab mates to decide on the best times to power down, use standby modes, or keep equipment running.

• Define Shutdown Protocols: Establish clear rules, such as “Turn off directly after use,” “Ask before turning off,” “Never turn off,” or “Turn off if you’re the last person leaving the lab.” This ensures everyone is on the same page, reducing unnecessary energy use.

Pro Tip: Optimize Equipment Readiness: Measure how long it takes for your equipment to get ready and share this information in a collaborative Excel sheet with your team. This will help you plan better and avoid leaving equipment running longer than necessary.

 2. Smart Purchasing Decisions

• Choose Energy-Efficient Equipment: When purchasing new equipment, prioritize models with lower energy consumption. Look for certifications like the ACT label and Energy Star, which indicate high efficiency and lower environmental impact.

 3. Optimize Settings

• Adjust Temperature Settings: Reconsider the temperature settings on your -80°C freezers, refrigerators, and air conditioning units.
• Collaborate with Building Administration: Work with your building administration and HVAC personnel to optimize temperature settings and air exchanges.
• Fine-Tune Experimental Settings: During experiments, review your settings to ensure they are energy-efficient. This includes scanning areas for microscopy or test runs to establish optimal settings.

Pic energy consumption from last time pdf with S-labs consumption of HVAC vs others

 4. Efficient Equipment Usage

• Choose the Right Piece of Equipment: For example, the appropriate centrifuge for your needs—smaller models often consume less energy.
• Maximize Dishwasher and Autoclave Efficiency: Only operate dishwashers and autoclaves when they are full, reducing the number of cycles and saving energy.
• Upgrade Software and Packages: Look for newer, more efficient software or packages that require less processing power.
• Optimize Server and Storage Usage: Make conscious choices about which servers to use and explore ways to save on hard drive space.

 5. Regular Maintenance

• Keep Equipment Well-Maintained: Regularly clean equipment, change necessary filters, and ensure refrigeration coils and door seals on refrigerators and freezers are clean and functioning efficiently.
• Declutter your Lab: Periodically check your samples and reagents, discarding anything you no longer need. This reduces the load on your storage equipment and improves overall efficiency.

 6. Collaborative Sharing

• Share Laboratory Equipment: Partner with other departments to share equipment. This not only saves on energy by reducing the number of instruments running but also cuts costs by sharing expenses with other research groups.
• When starting a new experimental series, try to involve collaborators to conduct test runs to validate hypotheses before establishing new methods in your lab

 7. Optimize Equipment

• Use Multi-Plugs and Smart Plugs: Employ multi-plugs or smart plugs to easily turn off ovens, water baths, and other equipment during inactivity. Automated on/off cycles can also ensure equipment isn’t left running unnecessarily.
• Improve Equipment Efficiency: Use covers for water baths and replace oil baths with more efficient alternatives like metal heating blocks or modern oil pumps. These small changes can lead to significant energy savings over time.

This list is certainly not exhaustive since scientists come up with new amazing practices to make their laboratories more sustainable every day. However, here is as much inspiration as we can give:

Reducing waste

• Choosing providers that avoid unnecessary packaging or opt for more easily degradable solutions like paper

• Reducing plastic waste within the laboratory can be achieved by:
• Using alternatives such as glass or metal items for flasks, dishes, serological pipettes and weighing boards
• Minimizing the size of consumables (especially tubes, serological pipettes, pipette tips)
• Pouring solutions where precises volumes are not decisive (e.g., washing steps)
• Reusing Falcon tubes, potentially after rinsing, especially for frequently used solutions
• Reusing pipette tips, tubes where cross-contamination is not an issue

• Precise calculation and bulk preparation of reagents and solutions
• Conscious use of gloves
• Making use of take-back programs for plastic items, including Styrofoam

Improving experimental conduct and design

• Proper experimental planning can be achieved by:
  • Leveraging existing literature to avoid redundant experiments
  • Robust statistical planning (especially power analysis) help reduce sample sizes and enhance statistical validity
  • Carefully chosen experimental conditions with proper controls
  • Reviewing consumable utilization ahead of conduct (including material, size and number of consumables)
  • Preparation procedures (e.g., optimizing pipetting schemes and master-mixes to reuse tips and tubes)
  • Adopting safer and more benign alternatives for commonly used reagents in experiments (e.g., DNA staining solutions, microscopic slide mounting agents, lysing agents, or protease inhibitors)
  • Alternative experimental approaches (e.g., using Supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC) to avoid organic solvents needed in HPLC)
  • Consider potential for downstream use or regeneration (e.g., regeneration of nucleic acid extraction columns)

• Implementing strategies and frameworks to ensure best practices (e.g., handling pipettes upright when pipetting)
• Awareness of toxicity of reagents in use for proper handling and discarding (e.g., including closing lids to avoid evaporation)

• Initiating collaboration with:
  • Colleagues in co-preparation of solutions, sharing of samples or co-use of machines (e.g., water baths)
  • Other groups to share equipment
  • Core facilities or partners to avoid unnecessary establishment of new methods

• Implementing the 12 rules of Green Chemistry, including
  • Conscious solvent and reagent selection (according to safety, LCA and impact assessment, e.g., Ethanol instead of Acetonitrile)
  • Optimize procedures by using catalyzers and reducing resource-intensive processes like heating or distillation
  • Using renewable feedstock and designing products for degradation

• Refining computational experiments by:
  • Adapting practices that reduce running times and optimize code efficiency
  • Measuring carbon footprints (and potential reductions)
  • Considering relocating computational tasks to energy-efficient data centers
  • Planning to run jobs during times of low demand
  • Implementing checkpointing strategies to streamline computational processes and reduce unnecessary energy consumption
  • Storing only essential data for regenerating large datasets, reducing energy demands and use hard drives instead of cloud-storage only
  • Avoiding using screensavers to minimize needless energy consumption
  • Selecting energy-efficient hardware especially when buying anew

Reducing paper, water and energy use

Paper

• Transition to digital sources like electronic lab journaling and online publications
• When printing is necessary, using recycled paper and opt for double-sided printing on previously used paper

Water

• Minimize water use, for example by soaking steps and mechanical cleaning
• Consciously discern water types (tap, distilled, double distilled etc.)
• Use only as much ice as needed

Energy

• Regularly organizing and cleaning digital inboxes to prevent unnecessary data storage
• Maintain a tidy system for experimental data, avoiding unnecessary duplication and keeping a safety copy securely stored on a hard drive
• Exercise caution with AI technologies and use of search engines due to their potential high energy consumption
• Evaluating the necessity of video in online meetings and switch to audio-only when possible to minimize data and energy usage
• Keeping laboratory fume hood sashes shut and turn machines off when not in use (e.g., water baths)
• Setting PCR-Holding Temperature to 12°C or higher

Changing procurement and purchasing processes

• Planning orders carefully by:
  • Creating an internal system to track chemical inventory and consumable supplies to minimize unnecessary orders
  • Collaborating with other laboratories or facilities to collect orders

• Choosing products consciously by:
  • Procuring items in quantities aligned with future usage
  • Emphasizing sustainable packaging practices, favoring minimal material usage and biodegradable materials where possible
  • Opting for specific shipping methods and alternatives to conventional cooling methods (e.g., when ordering polymerases without cooling or oligos dry)
  • Thoroughly evaluating feasible alternatives based on certifications, life cycle analyses, and sustainability practices

• Choosing the optimal supplier:
  • Preferring local suppliers to reduce transportation-related emissions and dependency on global supply routes
  • Preferring certified suppliers and articles
  • Exploring take-back programs and consider second-hand purchases to enhance sustainable procurement practices

Using equipment

• Choose instruments with reference to:
  • lifetime (e.g., photomultiplier tubes have longer lifetimes)
  • capacity (e.g., volume of sterilizers & autoclaves)
  • components (using low-boiling-point solvents in air-cooled condensers to reduce energy consumption)

• Running equipment that
  • Minimizes reagent use (e.g., Nitrogen consumption in MS or HPLC columns with smaller inner diameter to reduce solvent consumption and waste creation)
  • Enables change to more sustainable alternatives (Hydrogen as carrier gas instead of He in GC/MS)
  • Enables internal reuse (e.g., automated recycling of the mobile phase for example after absorption of the impurities)

• Making a conscious choice about what methodology to use (e.g., wet vs dry blotting, on site analysis, high throughput analysis, combination techniques such as LC-MS)
• Exercising best practices (e.g., not let elution fractions from chromatography columns evaporate or using all spots on matrix array plates for MS, putting as many samples on one microscopy slide as possible)
• Being aware of the robustness of methods (e.g., ability to reuse TLC capillaries after rinsing)

• Reducing energy use by:
  • Developing an energy plan, i.e., when to turn on and off individual machines
  • Using strategies like multi-plugs to turn off ovens and water baths during inactivity or employing smart plugs for automated on/off cycles
  • Considering carefully how you use equipment (settings including scanning area in microscopy)
  • Modifying freezer temperatures, such as increasing from -80 to -70
  • Using covers for water baths and replace oil baths with more efficient alternatives like metal heating blocks or efficient oil pumps
  • Operating dishwashers and autoclaves only at full capacity
  • Consciously choosing levels for the A/C set-up

• Reducing water use by:
  • Implementing low-flow aerators to conserve water
  • Using closed-cycle cooling systems and waterless liquid-cooled condensers with low-boiling-point solvents as an alternative to single-pass cooling methods

Optimizing waste treatment

• Making sure that evaporating waste is handled properly (e.g., stored in a hood or closed container)
• Using old jerry cans/flasks/container as waste containers (or already contaminated tubes)
• Create a plan how to handle cooling packs, animal bedding, Styrofoam etc
• Establishing education and indication systems (e.g., exhaustive stickers on waste bins, using and a database with necessary educational resources)
• Repairing broken glassware and old pipettes

Changing for internal organization

• Exploring “Smart-Lab” innovations to monitor and quantify lab processes (e.g., monitoring old freezers to control failures or assess energy consumptions)
• Have open conversations and discussion in lab meetings
• Reusing Labcoats

• Freeing and optimizing use of lab-space by:
  • Only buying/installing equipment that is certainly needed
  • Promoting the use of spacing or energy saving alternatives e.g. ventilated storage cabinets instead of fume hoods for storage
  • Encouraging the removal of unused equipment

Involving institute governance

• Creating clear guidelines, regulations or position papers
• Creating a position for a Sustainability Manager/Green Lab Expert
• Conscious assessment of space use and encouraging shared utilization of equipment
• Consciously choosing 3rd parties (e.g., for waste treatment or power providers)
• Initiating conversations with cafeteria staff to explore ways to mitigate their carbon footprint

Optimizing HVAC

• Adjusting and decreasing air flow within laboratory spaces during periods of inactivity at night or during vacations
• Prioritizing smart design principles when constructing new laboratories (e.g., including proper insulation, strategic window and vent placement, strategic placement and employment of emergency power systems)
• Precisely reviewing and setting A/C levels
• Organizing freezer placement and air conditioning systems properly to ensure efficient air circulation
• Removing or replacing energy inefficient equipment (e.g., sucking pumps)