Hello again from the International Freezer Challenge! Today we bring you an inspiring story from a group participating in this year’s competition: the Sanofi Pasteur R&D group in Cambridge Massachusetts. They reached out to us and wanted to share the progress they’ve made this year, and we hope this will inspire you to continue dedicating time and energy to the Freezer Challenge and laboratory sustainability efforts more generally.
Green Purchasing: We have partnered with Finance and Purchasing to put a system in place where orders for new freezers are funneled through the EHS department for sourcing of freezers with lower Global Warming Potential (GWP). We have also partnered with Eversource (our local utility company) to get credits for the purchasing of new energy efficient freezers.
“Chilling Up” ULT Freezers: Thanks largely to the evidence-based resources available through My Green Lab, we were able to convince the lab heads that a bulk of our -80°C freezers can be set to -70°C with no concerns of losing sample integrity.
Inventory and Maintenance: We now have a dedicated team to perform periodic maintenance of freezers and another dedicated person to perform freezer inventories. This has made a huge difference in getting freezer management under control.
Development of a Site Green Team: Our Green Team is completely organically grown with new members recruited solely by their motivation to make the site green! Some recent achievements by the team are switching to all compostable cups and cutlery at the cafeteria and increasing recycling in labs.
Take-Home Message: Small consistent steps taken in the right direction lead to huge sustainable gains down the road rather than a big overnight strategy that might fail!
“ You don’t have to do a lot to do a lot.”