26 February 2025
The consumable products in the lab, such as tubes, vials, enzymes and other reagents, are often the major contributor to the lab carbon footprint. For universities that calculate a complete carbon footprint for the entire institute (e.g., Copenhagen University and UCL), lab consumables stand out as one of the major contributing categories. Though an exact carbon footprint of a single product is often lacking (we often do not have enough data for a complete life cycle analysis), there are tools like spend-based methods which can help to get a good overview of the total impact of a single product. Better recording and new rules (like the EU and UK green taxonomy) will increase the availability of data and create detailed carbon footprint reports for products. Currently, though some companies may provide a sustainability matrix to compare products, this is often difficult and not transparent. Products used in academia may have different manufacturing requirements than in other industries, which can affect the sustainability of these products and is a criterion that we should consider.
What is unique about the products used for academic research?
Tools and products used in research are often high-end products that use a substantial number of resources to be produced. Secondly, academic research often requires small quantities, requiring vast resources spent on packaging and transporting products to their destination in good shape and on time. Finally, lab work is dynamic and there are no fixed pathways that exist in universities. This results in a multitude of products ordered with little repeats, which makes optimisation difficult.
Although difficult, it is important to get a good overview of the products that you order. A centralised ordering system can be the first step, followed by combining orders to reduce shipping footprints. Finally, there are an increasing number of products coming to the market that can be reused more efficiently or that can be recycled more easily. Being critical about your own operations and comparing products is the way to go, such as some labs have already started doing.
In the next post, I will analyse how materials and resources affect the carbon footprint in labs. To find out more about lab sustainability, I discuss the role of energy and equipment in lab sustainability, and what is the overall environmental impact of academia.
