Welcome to the
Virtual Sustainability Training Scavenger Hunt
Can you find all 24 green lab tips? Discover potential eco-friendly practices inside each of these 5 virtual lab spaces! When you uncover a tip, you will receive a green leaf. Smile along the way with your green lab mate.
Begin
Lab Bench
Tissue Culture
Media Prep
Freezer
Glassware
Virtual Sustainable Lab Tips & Scavenger Hunt
It looks like you are joining us on mobile! Feel free to browse the tips here, but if you want to participate in the scavenger hunt, please use a desktop.
Select a room to search for tips.
You are in the
Lab Bench Room
There are many ways to make life science more sustainable at your lab bench. You can find 8 green lab tips in here.
Design lab automation workflows to conserve reagents and plastic consumables
When you need to scale up your lab work, minimize reagents and plastics consumption with your choice of automation technology and protocol programming. As examples, you may be able exchange pipette tips less often in a protocol, or even eliminate tips entirely with acoustic dispensing. Or ask if you can switch from a 96-well to a 384-well plate.
Hi. Welcome to my lab. I don't have a tip for you.
Ugh. Those fell out of my lab book. No tip here.
No tip here! How many colonies did you count?
Recycling is a great idea! No specific tip here, though.
No tip here. But, would you mind watering my plant?
I love it when my lab mates keep this organized. No tip here.
It is a good idea to post important safety information, but this is not a sustainability tip.
Look how neat my shelves are! No tip here.
Schedule lab equipment power downs with a programmable outlet timer or “turn off” signs
Schedule saving energy. A programmable outlet timer is one way to schedule automated power off times for small lab equipment. Equipment with monitor or screens are opportunities to reduce carbon emissions. Share energy saving expectations considerately with a friendly reminder sign.
Recycle paper-based coolers and reuse, recycle or return EPS foam to vendors
Close the loop on cold shipping waste. EPS foam coolers keep frozen stocks of cells or tissues stable. If foam recycling is not feasible, look for return to vendor for reuse. Paper-based coolers are easy to recycle with cardboard collections. Trash single use ice packs. Do not dispose down sink drains. Consolidate all cold shipments.
Don’t mix uncontaminated materials in with biohazardous waste
Sort regulated waste carefully. Unless your facility uses a biohazardous waste recycling service, this waste is incinerated or autoclaved then landfilled at great environmental cost. Keep uncontaminated materials out of the red bin.
Turn off lights at night and add LED task lighting
Light your lab purposely, not profusely. If lighting control occupancy systems are not in place, add a reminder sticker next to the switch to turn off overhead lights at the end of the day. Adding LED benchtop lights can improve pipetting accuracy with energy efficiency.
Work with your calibration service to set up a cost neutral micropipette repair program
Don’t despair, repair! Foster scientific accuracy and directly reduce costs for life science research by establishing a repair program at your facility. See the six steps in our Green Lab Tip: How to Start a Micropipette Repair Program.
Shut the sash to save energy
You can prevent massive energy waste from a constant volume type fume hood without compromising safety. Unless you are actively using the hood, shut the sash. Drive awareness with a sticker on the hood.
Choose protocols that use less lab plastic than conventional methods
Look for opportunities to reduce plastic consumables when choosing your protocols. For example, microbiology labs can reduce plastic waste by replacing conventional C.F.U/ml counting with Track and Drop Plate techniques. Learn from a green champion lab
There is no tip here. Do you need to use the incubator?
Try not to open and close this too often. But, this is not an official tip!
Do you need to use the sink? Let me move over. But, there is no tip here.
Congratulations! You have found all 24 tips!
Enjoy visiting our virtual lab? Feel free to share these tips!
Freezer Room
Protect your ULT stocks and save energy. Find 4 green lab tips in this room.
I do not have a tip for you. But, I think that this handle is stuck. Can you please open it for me?
This is a nice place to keep products that can be stored at room temperature. But, this is not one of the tips.
Good thinking, but the tip is somewhere else.
No tip here. I forgot my glasses...can you read these to me?
No tip here. My plant is looking great, isn't it?
Raise Ultra Low Temp freezers to -70°C when possible
Set storage temps strategically. Chilling up to -70°C can save 30-40% of energy. Keep stocks that require stable temperature conditions like E.coli competent cells, or rare tissue samples, in ULT freezers that are opened less frequently.
Teamwork consolidating freezer space by reviewing old stocks
Save energy and valuable freezer space by periodically meeting with your lab group to review stocks. Toss expired reagents, old projects that will not be pursued, unneeded duplicates, and unmarked vials. Cold storage consolidation boosts resources for current projects. Extra lab freezer space is peace of mind in case of a freezer breakdown. Teamwork for success as explained in this interview.
Perform basic freezer maintenance every six months
Extend equipment lifecycles. Basic user maintenance of freezers includes clearing ice buildup from interior doors and the gasket, vacuuming condenser coils, and removing and washing the filter every six months.
Use inventory software and add a map to your lab freezer door
Implement a shared file inventory system and add an inventory map to freezer doors. This will protect stocks with reduce temperature fluctuations during the time doors are open. Making inventory information accessible can also conserve scientific funding that could be wasted by expired reagents or duplicating work to create samples.
Take a seat and look over our inventory. There is a tip near here.
These freezers do not contain a tip, but check the other ones.
Glassware Room
Sustainability doesn’t compromise life science results. Discover 4 green lab tips for use in the glassware room.
Oh, no! I need to clean this up. I do not have a tip for you.
Great idea! But, there is no specific sustainability tip here.
Please do not use too many of these. However, this tip does not count!
I need to dump my broken glass into this box. No tip here.
You may see this in a glassware room, but there is no tip here.
Run the autoclave at full capacity
This saves energy and conserves water. Schedule shut offs on nights and weekends. If you have multiple autoclave choices, use the smaller autoclave for smaller loads.
Drying oven heat sterilization uses less energy than autoclaving
Dry heat sterilization is effective for glassware, metal tools and equipment. It uses less energy than steam sterilization. Schedule power downs at night and weekends.
Rinse glassware with tap water first and request water conserving aerators
Rinse larger glassware with tap water before using deionized water. Some water filtration cartridges can be recycled with a manufacturer program. Water is a finite resource worth protecting. Report dripping faucets and request aerators to conserve water. Never discard plastic microbeads down the sink drain. Few facilities have trap capacity to completely prevent those microbeads from ending up in waterways.
Switch to reusable glassware whenever possible
Dry heat sterilization is effective for lab glassware. Convert to reusable glassware whenever possible to reduce plastic waste and carbon footprints. Glass volumetric pipettes and glass Petri plates are coming back big.
No tip here, but, would you mind moving these beakers? I would like to use the sink.
I am sure that there is something important on here, but there is no official tip.
I have been looking for that lab notebook for a month. There is a tip near here.
Media Prep Room
Safety and reliability are paramount in media and solutions prep spaces. Can you find the 4 sustainability tips?
This is the safety cabinet. No specific sustainability tip here.
Make sure signage is up-to-date. But, this is not a sustainability tip.
Hey! Are you reading my emails? There is no tip here.
I forget what I was going to do next. I do not have a tip for you.
There is a lot of media prep happening here. But, there is no tip.
Will you please tare the scale for me? No tip here.
Please recycle! There is a sustainability tip near here, though.
Reduce the carbon footprint of lab glove waste
Divert uncontaminated lab glove waste with sustainable disposal. If single stream recycling is available, use a service that will verify resin will be re-manufactured rather than shipped to distant unregulated markets. If glove recycling is geographically distant, waste-to-energy incineration with modern carbon capture can reduce your carbon footprint.
Use a pipette refill system
Some vendors offer convenient pipette refill systems carefully designed to reduce packaging waste and incorporate renewable and recycled materials. Manufacturers offer these systems validated to be sterile, DNase and RNase free and endotoxin-free.
Process micropipette tips for re-use
Some lab facilities use instruments to re-process pipette tips for re-use. This reduces research costs and prevents plastic waste. Having this equipment on site is also a hedge against supply chain problems. A plasma-based re-sterilization instrument can be used for filter tips. Learn more about the pipette washer for regular tips in our interview with the inventor.
Reuse and recycle pipette tip boxes
Polypropylene tip boxes can be refilled with bulk bagged tips and autoclaved for reuse multiple times. You can load bulk pipette tips into racks faster with this 3D printed device. Eventually boxes can be recycled, preferably into lab plastics if a specialized closed-loop stream is locally available.
I have some great new data in these lab notebooks. But, I do not have a tip for you.
I know that you want to find a tip here. When was the last time this shelf was dusted?
Great idea! This official tip can be found in another room.
Tissue Culture Room
There are opportunities to conserve water, energy and single-use plastics in every tissue culture room. Look for 4 green lab tips in here.
This is my water bath. There is no tip here.
No tip. But, thank you for finding my lab glasses. Are they broken?
There is no tip here. I would appreciate it if you would recycle those papers.
Are you following me? I do not have a tip to share.
There is no tip here. Would you please empty this for me?
How did those get there? Thank you for finding them. No tip here.
Schedule power downs for the chilled centrifuge
Schedule power downs for nights and weekends for a chilled benchtop centrifuge that sees heavy daily use. If used less often, add a clipboard to notify lab mates to not turn off when it is use. Water bath use can be organized similarly, if the equipment does not have timer automation built in.
Order conical tubes packaged with paper racks or bagged in bulk
Avert excess packaging waste. Order conical tubes packaged in paper racks or in bulk bags to prevent EPS foam waste.
Recycle non-hazardous used centrifuge tubes via single stream
Uncontaminated conical tubes can be recycled with a single stream recycling service if a local service with verified buyers for the recycled resin is available to your facility. Biohazardous or chemically contaminated waste must be treated according to local regulations. Single use by design, most conical tubes risk warping if re-processed with heat for selective reuse.
For Class II biosafety hood types that are connected to external exhausts, once sterility is no longer required and the interior surface work area is decontaminated, allow five minutes to purge the system, then turn off blower. Confirm specific operational requirements with the hood manufacturer and follow biosafety regulations for your lab work.
No energy wasted here! This is a hint to find your tip elsewhere.
If you need to use the lab bench, I'll move these. There is no tip here.
Great idea! You will find a tip related to this in another room.
I just restocked this shelf. I hope that we have everything we need.
