Our University’s laboratories have been awarded three more silver awards for their exemplary actions undertaken to improve sustainability practices under the Laboratory Efficiency Assessment Framework or LEAF.
LEAF is a green lab award scheme developed by University College London (UCL) to help lab managers, technical staff, academics and students address sustainability issues in the labs that they work in.
Since the University signed up to LEAF in 2021, there have been four silver and 27 bronze awards. You can find the full list here.
These latest awards were won by the Biomedical Imaging Unit, Primary Ciliary Dyskinesia (both in the School of Clinical and Experimental Sciences) and the Harrowven Group in the School of Chemistry.
Our University is committed to sustainability. Cutting across Goals 1, 2 and 5 of the Sustainability Strategic Plan is work around sustainability in laboratories, ensuring everything we do in research and education considers its environmental impact.
Peter Morgan, Technical Manager in the School of Geography and Environmental Science, who played a lead role in encouraging labs to engage with LEAF, says:
“Laboratories are workplaces that often have a high carbon footprint due to the complex activities undertaken in them. Scientific equipment can use a lot of energy and a lot of waste can be produced, for example, many labs will use single-use plastics.”
“Many people feel they want to help make the University more sustainable, but addressing issues in labs can be daunting. LEAF is a toolkit developed specifically to help those working in labs address sustainability issues in their workplaces.”
Being part of LEAF means that you also have the support of colleagues from across the University. There is a Teams group where you can share ideas, swap unwanted lab equipment and gain support for making your lab more sustainable.
Going forward we encourage all our labs to work towards LEAF awards. Using the calculators in LEAF will allow us to quantify the energy used in laboratories and measure the impact of behaviour changes implemented. If you work in one of our labs and want to register with LEAF to make a positive change, contact Peter Morgan for more information.
Coming up we plan to work with our suppliers to reduce the carbon footprint of our supply chains, starting with a talk by laboratory supplies company, VWR on 11 March 11.30-12.30 in Building 100 room 5015, all are welcome to attend.
In the April edition of Staff Matters we’ll talk to some of our technical staff who worked hard to achieve these recent silver awards.
To learn more about what our University is doing to embed sustainability in everything we do, read about our Sustainability Strategic Plan.