Reducing Energy Consumption In Laboratories
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 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 3. Optimize Settings Pic energy consumption from last time pdf with S-labs consumption of HVAC vs others 4. Efficient Equipment Usage 5. Regular Maintenance 6. Collaborative Sharing 7. Optimize Equipment
Ask Me Anything – 10 Questions About Sustainability Answered
Question 1: I work with animals, mice to be precise. Are there best practices or opportunities to be more sustainable? 1. Optimize Experimental Design Minimize: the number of animals used by ensuring experiments have sufficient statistical power and address specific research questions effectively. This reduces unnecessary animal usage and associated costs. 2. Consider Breeding Practices: Efficient breeding strategies are essential, especially for genetically modified mice, to avoid unnecessary surplus animals and overwork for researchers. 3. Reduce Waste and Resource Consumption: Implement practices to minimize waste generation, such as composting animal bedding, which requires coordination but can significantly reduce environmental impact. 4. Balance Sterility and Reduction: Do not impair cleanliness levels in animal facilities but plan your stay (potentially with coworkers) to reduce the amount of personal protective equipment worn. 5. Optimize Experimental Procedures: Streamline laboratory protocols to minimize resource usage, such as reducing pipette tip consumption or maximizing cell yield from harvested organs. Literature: Some ideas for optimizing statistics: A / B / C Question 2: What is possible to make more sustainable when it comes to experiments? 1. Review Experimental Strategies: Did you optimize statistics in terms of power and significance? Do you have a solid strategy, e.g., efficient implementation of controls or avoiding using painkillers without known mechanisms as controls. 2. Implement the Six R’s: Focus on reducing and reusing materials. For instance, pipette tips can be reused by pipetting water before DNA, and wash solutions can be prepared directly in petri dishes to minimize tube usage. Also, consider using the same culture dish for routine passaging after thorough validation. Sometimes it is possible to pour wash-solutions instead of pipetting them etc. 3. Method Optimization: It depends very much on your set-up, e.g., investigate greener methods such as HPLC-MS, which streamline workflows and require fewer sample preparations. Consider using alternative eluents like ethanol instead of acetonitrile, although potential drawbacks like increased HPLC pressure and altered UV cutoff must be considered. In the live event I mentioned: 6R and some inspiration for HPLC Question 3: What is meant by regulation in sustainability? Regulation in sustainability refers to laws and requirements set by national or supranational entities, such as the European Union, that compel organizations to report on their sustainability efforts and adhere to certain standards. Currently, this primarily affects industries and companies, but there’s a possibility it may extend to academic research laboratories in the future. For companies, compliance with sustainability regulations may involve the creation of sustainability reports, which are becoming as critical as financial statements. The EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) may necessitate reporting on a wide range of data points, potentially exceeding 1,000. In laboratories, sustainability regulation may require reporting on activities and environmental impacts, such as Scope 3 emissions from procurement and purchasing. Sustainability officers or designated personnel may be tasked with collecting and managing this data. Regulation can also influence purchasing decisions, potentially requiring organizations to consider sustainability factors when acquiring products or chemicals, akin to current hiring practices where equal opportunities are provided to all applicants. You can watch our previous event on that topic as well : ) Question 4: We need administration to join in. But how? 1. Regulation and Reporting Waiting for regulations to mandate sustainability reporting or initiatives can provide a framework for administration involvement (unfortunate but true…) 2. Grassroots Initiatives Scientists and staff can actively prompt administration by demonstrating the value and feasibility of sustainability initiatives. By proactively suggesting and implementing sustainability measures, staff can show administration the potential benefits and garner support for broader initiatives. 3. Align with Administrative Priorities Tailoring sustainability initiatives to align with administrative priorities can help garner support. For example, emphasizing the educational value of sustainability initiatives can appeal to universities focused on teaching and education. Demonstrating cost savings, reduced maintenance or risk reduction associated with sustainability measures can be quite powerful. However, sometimes, personal buy-in can be sufficient. E.g., an amazing colleague called Star Scott has convinced administration by making them emotionally involved after sharing that their lab waste ended up in nearby socially disadvantaged communities. Question 5: What are Carbon Credits? Carbon credits are a form of tradable permit or certificate that represents the right to emit one ton of carbon dioxide or an equivalent amount of greenhouse gases. They are a mechanism used to offset emissions by investing in projects that reduce or remove greenhouse gas emissions elsewhere. Here’s how carbon credits typically (should) work: 1. Emission Reduction Projects: Carbon offset projects can take various forms, such as reforestation, renewable energy generation, methane capture from landfills, or energy efficiency initiatives. These projects are implemented to either reduce or remove greenhouse gas emissions from the atmosphere. 2. Certification and Verification: Once a project is implemented, it undergoes a certification process to ensure that it meets certain standards and criteria set by various carbon offsetting organizations. 3. Issuance of Carbon Credits: Upon successful verification, carbon credits are issued to the project based on the amount of emissions reduced or removed. Each carbon credit typically represents one ton of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO2e) that has been mitigated by the project. 4. Trading and Sale Carbon: credits can be bought and sold on carbon markets, allowing companies or individuals to offset their own emissions by purchasing credits generated by emission reduction projects. 5. Offsetting Emissions: By purchasing carbon credits, companies or individuals can offset their own carbon footprint, effectively neutralizing their emissions by investing in projects that mitigate emissions elsewhere. However, while carbon credits are intended to incentivize emission reductions and support sustainable development initiatives, there are huge issues with their effectiveness and integrity: 1. Additionality: There are many example where some carbon offset projects may not be additional, meaning they would have occurred anyway even without the sale of carbon credits. This raises questions about the real environmental impact of offsetting activities. 2. Longevity: Some offset projects, such as reforestation, face challenges related to permanence. For example, a forest that is planted to sequester carbon could be subject to deforestation in
3 Overlooked Benefits Of Publishing With A Society Journal
By Patrick Penndorf TL;DR In contrast to commercial journals run by publishers such as Nature or Science, Society Journals are run by practicing scientists within nonprofit research organizations. Therefore: • The editors in Society Journals are empathetic to the situation of researchers, prioritizing improvement of manuscripts instead of excessive requests. This is also why they organize handpicked peer review to assure valuable feedback. • Society Journals publish work dedicated to a certain field. They have a focused audience that is more likely to cite your work instead of just reading it. • Publishing with a Society Journal is a guarantee that your paper is treated properly (reliably accessible, listed in major databases, securely available on servers in the future, feasible APCs). Any profit a Society Journals makes, goes back as an investment into the scientific community for example in the form of workshops for early career scientists, scholarships or conference organization. Publish or Perish – A Personal Confession A few centuries ago, one would read about all important new advances in a handful of printed journals. Nowadays, it’s all about Googling and trying to handle the multitude of publications coming out every day. Due to the growth of the scientific community, Impact Factor became the one and only consideration for many scientists. I can still remember that when I pursued my PhD at a Max Planck research group in Germany, I did not even consider publishing anywhere but in Science or Nature. Why? Because I was naive. I did not know society journals existed until 3 years after I started to volunteer in societies! Of course, outstanding findings that are of interest to various fields at once should be published in high Impact Factor Journals such as Nature or Science. However, trying to publish any work there will harm ones career a lot. Why Society Journals are Valuable Instead of knocking your teeth out and spending 3 more years until your paper might be published in a high-impact factor journal without reaching its proper audience or going with a vanity journal in which peer review is practically nonexistent, simply getting the paper off your back – you can publish with a Society Journal. Society Journals are run by Scientists for Scientists. They are embedded in nonprofit research organizations. This is why they prioritize scientific rigor and insight instead of making money. They are the gatekeepers to great science with a clearly focused scope. They publish work for a dedicated audience, and thus, valuing robust data and research effort more than Impact Factor. Unfortunately, Society Journals do not undertake the marketing activity to reach as many people as Nature or Science. Undoubtably, Society Journals deliver a lot of value. However, they are run by scientists who do not feel comfortable doing marketing. Not even when it would be appropriate. To my mind, Society Journals can be the diamond in the rough – and soon the “gold” rush might begin so let’s get you informed about the 3 overseen benefits of publishing with a society journal: Publishing to a Relevant Community Probably the most important metric these days is how many people cite your publication. This is not the same as how many people see your publication. If you have me as a university student read about your science in Nature, you certainly made my day more enjoyable, but you will not receive a citation in return. Throughout the decades of their existence, Society Journals have built a dedicated community of the core scientists within a particular field. Of course, the younger generations of scientists are totally focused on publishing high-impact factor, forgetting that a high IF is calculated for an entire journal. It says nothing whether your paper will be cited at all. The key question is, whom do you want to know about your work – a large crowd or a dedicated audience in a particular field? Societies such as the International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology will not promote your work to scientists working in neurophysiology but it will give you access to researchers in your field all over the world. Ensuring Your Paper is Handled Properly We as scientists invest years of work into a publication. Long nights, frustration, unexpected pivots… Our work becomes somewhat of a darling to us. Therefore, we need to protect our dear child from being abducted or mistreated. Whenever you publish with a society journal, you can be sure that you did not fall prey to a vanity journal or a predatory publisher. This is crucially important because you can be sure that your paper is treated properly. That means it will be accessible to readers, findable in the common databases, and it will be stored as long as the internet exists. With most predatory publishers, all that counts is the money you pay them. On which server your paper ends up is less than certain. Furthermore, if your paper ends up in a Journal that is mostly predatory, who will trust your work? Society Journals have such a great reputation because of a reason: Rigor in Review Would you like to have ChatGPT as your peer reviewer? Peer review is paramount to create trust and reliability, but it can also lead to tremendous headaches if done improperly. Society Journals do not allow for shortcuts. However, they make sure you will actually receive useful comments because your reviewers will be handpicked. This kind of peer review is often a great chance to actually find out what is needed to have your colleagues actually cite your paper. Of note, rigor also excludes excess. One of the most interesting papers I have ever read turned out to be 40% based on peer review comments (it took the lab 1-2 years to work on this additional data). This will not happen to you. Society Journals do not intend to change your work. You will not be stuck with years of additional work. Finally, let us talk about the editors. Your editor will most likely