Where Ideas Grow

i3S Greenlab works on the certification of sustainable laboratories and creates a European website with guidelines

Two years after it was created, the i3S GreenLab Initiative continues to make the i3S more environmentally sustainable. The most recent actions focus on participating in the LEAF program, which aims to certify sustainable laboratories, with three i3S laboratories already included in the initiative, and on building a website on sustainable research within the framework of a European alliance of universities, EUGLOH.
 
At the start of this year, i3S joined the LEAF program with three pilot laboratories; the research groups “Structural Biochemistry” (coordinated by João Cabral) and “Ageing and Aneuploidy” (led by Elsa Logarinho) and a scientific platform “Cell Culture and Genotyping” (coordinated by Paula Magalhães). LEAF (Laboratory Efficiency Assessment Framework, UCL) is a non-profit program available to research institutions that sets sustainability standards in laboratories. It aims to help researchers self-assess and implement sustainability actions to reduce costs and the environmental footprint in laboratories.
 
LEAF recommends actions that laboratory users can take to save on plastic, water, energy, and other resources. By participating in the program, laboratories reduce their carbon emissions and create an environment that supports the quality of research. Basically, explains Andreia Fernandes, “it is about a behavior change program, some easier to implement and others more difficult. The project started in April and the idea is to evaluate how the experience is going in these three units and to extend the program next year to everyone who wants to join”.
 
For example, “putting signs on the hoods to encourage closing the window after use or adjusting computer settings to minimize the time until hibernation and to reduce the brightness of the monitors are measures that are easy to implement and have an impact”, explains Isabel Amaral. But there are other guidelines that are a little more difficult to apply, such as making a group decision about which equipment should be turned off after each use, at the end of the day, or never and making sure that the decision is followed; when purchasing new equipment to consider the energy and material consumption; or developing a protocol for organizing samples by departing laboratory members.

A website with sustainability guidelines for Life Sciences laboratories

As part of the European University Alliance for Global Health (EUGLOH), which the University of Porto is a part of, i3S GreenLab recently submitted an application to a very competitive call for ideas with a project to develop a website with sustainability guidelines for Life Sciences laboratories. It has obtained funding of 3,500 euros and will now build a website together with the other partners of this European alliance.
 
The EUGLOH network is a consortium of five European universities (soon to be nine) whose main objective is to develop interdisciplinary activities in the areas of education and training related to well-being and global health. “This is an excellent opportunity to increase the visibility of our work as a GreenLab and it has the great advantage of putting us in contact with groups similar to ours in several European countries”, said Bruna Costa, one of the authors of the project.

EUGLOH is one of the first 17 European University Alliances and is funded by the European Commission through the Erasmus+ Programme. Dedicated to Global Health, this consortium represents an academic community of over 200,000 students, brings together a set of top-quality resources and infrastructures and gathers a critical mass of excellence in the fields of teaching, research and innovation.