Environmental Sustainability
The Department of Genetics is committed to improving its environmental footprint and creating an active sustainable and environmentally friendly culture. We have a Sustainability Committee to oversee all sustainability and environmental policy matters for the Department.
The Committee meets once a term to discuss pressing issues and put actions in place to work towards our Local Environmental Sustainability Plan (LESP) and LEAF (Laboratory Efficiency Assessment Framework) award. The Department is pleased to have achieved Silver for the University’s Green Impact scheme and LEAF award in 2023 and is currently working towards the Gold LEAF award and introducing the LESP action plan.
Some examples of the actions we have implemented towards reducing our environmental footprint can be seen below:
Energy Efficiency
Labs use 10x more energy than office spaces, so as a department with a large number of labs, its important we do what we can to reduce our energy usage across the board.
We’ve already made a start by switching over to automatic lights across most of the department, meaning they won’t stay on if the room is empty.
Cold Storage
A single Ultra Low Temperature freezer can use as much energy as an average household everyday. We have reduced our ULTs from -80°C to -70°C and have already saved 30-40% of their energy use.
Purchasing
When purchasing new items, its second nature to compare price, but its just as important to compare energy ratings and sustainable practices in producing the items. We encourage our purchasers to take these factors into account when they are making purchases, as well as considering ordering from companies that have sustainability initiatives, such as take back programs for packaging (Agilent, Corning, NEB, MiliporeSigma) or recyclable packaging (ThermoFisher).