Can science cure plastic addiction?

Towards Sustainable Living in the UK: The BabraHAM Laboratory at the University of Nottingham (UK) and the Future of its Carbon Neutral Laboratory

At the BabraHAM Institute in Cambridge, UK, researchers are showing more interest in sustainable practices. After all, they are uniquely qualified to understand the various threats to the planet. She says she used to collect and analyse data as a scientist, and that helped her see the scale and severity of the problem. “But it’s a bit out of our field to understand the best choices to make.” If scientists really want to reduce their environmental impact, she says, they’ll need to take an approach that’s as evidence-based and results-oriented as their research.

Before they make any changes to their protocols, they should know their results won’t be affected. If your research requires 20 pipette tips you should use them, says Freese. “You should not feel bad about conducting more experiments if it means your results become more significant and reproducible.”

Scientists at the carbon neutral laboratory are urged to reduce the use of toxic chemicals that have been in standard protocols for decades. “If a reaction that I want to do requires me to use dichloromethane, I will then challenge myself to look for an alternative,” Licence says.

The Carbon Neutral Laboratory at the University ofNottingham, UK is a one of a kind facility thanks to some setbacks but is also saving money thanks to sustainable living. The lab officially opened in 2017 at a reported cost of $20.8 million, with most of the funding coming from the multinational pharmaceutical company GSK. The building, powered partly by solar arrays and a biofuel heat system, is designed to consume less than 40% of the power used by a typical lab of a similar size. “We’re paying back the carbon [used for construction] by not buying electricity from the grid,” says chemist Peter Licence, director of the lab. “The whole concept is an experiment.”

Still, it will take some time for the lab to live up to its name. The original aspiration was to reach net carbon neutrality within 25 years, enough time to allow energy savings to offset the energy required for its construction. “We are, at the moment, slightly behind target because there’s been some technical problems with some of the mechanical, electrical and combined heat and power units that are run on biomass,” Licence says. The 25-year time frame is when I am sure we will achieve carbon neutrality. But where we sit right now, I would say that we’re probably three, four or five years behind that payback schedule.”

According to Thomas Freese, lead author of the RSC Sustainability report and a PhD student in green chemistry, this awareness is turning into action in some sectors. Leading research universities are cutting their environmental impact, funders are raising their standards and individual scientists are changing their protocols to make their research more efficient, less wasteful and more sustainable. Freese thinks it is an intellectual grassroots movement.

A few buttons can be pushed as simple steps. Durgan explains that the Babraham’s labs turned the temperature of their 40 ultra-cold freezers up, from −80 °C to −70 °C . Some researchers warned that, if the freezers ever malfunctioned, the samples would spoil faster without that extra 10 °C cushion. To ease those concerns, Durgan spoke to Martin Howes, then the sustainable-labs coordinator at the University of Cambridge, UK, who reported that scientists there had made the adjustment without any issues. She was reassured because of the researchers who reported their own experiences with the 70 C freezers. At the Babraham, the move reduced energy consumption by nearly 20% without affecting the frozen samples.

Fume hoods are used in energy-conservation efforts. As outlined in the RSC Sustainability report, a typical fume hood uses 3.5 times more energy than an average household does each year1. Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has estimated that it costs more than US$4,500 to run a fume hood per year, a significant dent to a lab’s budget. Simply closing the sliding window at the front of the hood when not using it can cut the air flow rate by two-thirds. A Harvard initiative in 2015–16 to close fume hoods reduced energy costs by nearly $200,000 each year3.

Fretz says that although the team has tried using glass and stainless steel in place of plastics in active-air and surface-microcosm studies, each collection can have upwards of 500–1,000 samples, which means that substantial time and space is needed for cleaning and sterilizing. Plastic single-use consumables have been used as the de facto solution because we don’t have the staff, lab space or budget to take on this extra work.

The Challenge of Sustainability for Labs: How Funding Increases the Impact of Materials, Processes, and Waste Efficiencies in Biomedical Research

Durgan adds that any cutbacks in the name of sustainability could lead to more waste if the research results aren’t reliable. Less time and resources are going to be wasted if we can’t make sure our data is accurate and reliable.

Unfortunately, Connelly says, scientists can’t simply consult manufacturers’ labels to determine which products deliver efficiency without compromising research results. Firms are able to attach claims of sustainable to products that are really wasteful. “Companies are using their own standards,” Connelly said. “Without third-party verification, you have to be smart enough to know which standards are credible and which ones aren’t.”

My Green Lab has launched a database of environmental impact scores for more than 1,200 lab supplies in a bid to improve clarity. The scores, presented on a branded ACT label, take into account the full life cycle of a product, including its manufacturing impact, use of energy and water, packaging and ultimate disposal.

Plaques, stickers, and other forms of recognition can be meaningful, Durgan believes, but there is a stronger incentive structure that should attract more labs to science. The Concordat was released in the spring by the largest charity in the UK in terms of spending, with a major funder of biomedical science worldwide. By the end of 2025, Wellcome will only fund labs that have received some level of accreditation, such as from My Green Labs or LEAF (Laboratory Efficiency Assessment Framework), a programme at University College London (see go.nature.com/4etcnwe). Cancer Research UK wants to reduce its direct and indirect carbon emissions by 50% by 2030, and it will require funding applicants to be accredited by the end of the year.

Durgan says that funding agencies are the only entities that can bring big change. Funding is going to depend on the reason for being sustainable, and people who are not motivated from an environmental viewpoint will have a reason to be sustainable.

To incentivize a shift away from single-use plastics in research, universities have rolled out funding mechanisms and educational workshops. A team at King’s College London is helping labs to get accredited in sustainable practices under an international scheme called the Laboratory Efficiency Assessment Framework. “One success story we had was how a PhD student led a lab to replace single-use non-recyclable plastic well-plates with reusable ceramic well-plates for brain-section immunohistochemistry staining,” says Broadbent.

The office of Extramural Research does not require lab certification, but does consider the scientific environment during peer review and monitor compliance with all requirements post-award, according to a statement to Nature.

Changing the way you dispose of plastic waste – how to replace it with glass? A case study of a partnership between RecycleLab and King’s College

Laboratory results have improved even more. The Marine Institute scientist Jane Kilcoyne achieved annual savings of $16,000 by turning up the temperature of freezers, closing fume hoods and ordering only what was needed.

“The challenge right now, to get more organizations to consider recycling their plastic waste, will be scale and price,” says Dainton. RecycleLab is still not as cheap as multinational recycling companies partly because they are not yet having a customer base, but there is potential because lab plastic is a global issue across teaching institutions and hospitals.

After sample collection, most of the reagents for library preparation and removal are also packaged in plastic. It’s not easy to substitute plastic with glassware because glass is more prone to break and create a hazardous spill.

The trial data proves that the programme worked well, and has led to a partnership between the College of Health, Science & Society and RecycleLab in the UK. The college generated around 10% of the plastic waste annually, and we expect to recycle over 600 kilomes of plastic waste through this partnership.

The authors noted that adopting their practices would require considerable operational and behavioural changes, which often acts as a deterrent. For instance, a metal loop used to plate bacteria needs to be heated to ensure biological decontamination, which takes time, and the plastic containers used to store chemicals have to be transported to a specialist facility for cleaning.

But times are changing, says Broadbent. Through a project funded by King’s College, her team, along with an undergraduate student working on the project, is developing a business case for switching to glass containers. It’s important to look at the costs, labour, safety and materials when making a change such as this, Broadbent says.

It involves high temperatures to kill flies, and produces a lot of carbon emissions. With the environmental impact growing, addressing this issue is an urgent priority for the team.