Business Development Director, My Green Lab
Raj Patey helps lab supply manufacturers improve their environmental impact through the ACT Ecolabel Program, which focuses on Accountability, Consistency, and Transparency. The program provides third-party verified evaluations of products, covering manufacturing, energy and water use, packaging, and end-of-life. Raj and his team guide manufacturers through the process to deliver real value for both the company and customers.
This Transcript is AI-Generated
Raj Patey: Sustainability is something where if you are in the lab and you are designing new processes, you are designing a new lab building. Even you think about how can we set up this whole operation to be lower impact and to be more sustainable whilst still achieving its aim.
Chai: If you work in a lab, there are everyday items that create huge carbon emissions, whether it's ultra low temperature freezers.
Or consumables, all of it adds up to around 20 tons of carbon per laboratory every year
Micah: built to make scientific research possible. These tools leave a footprint where only just beginning to fully comprehend the good news scientists have the power to shrink it.
Raj Patey: You've got the most educated, well-informed people in in the globe.
You can argue science can't lead the way in sustainability. Then who can.
Micah: In this episode, we break down the major sources of a lab's carbon footprint. We'll explore how to spot greenwash products, share inspiring sustainability success stories, and show practical ways you can make changes in your own lab.
I'm Chai Nussbaumer. And I'm Micah Schweitzer. This is Balancing the Future from METTLER TOLEDO.
Chai: On this show, we delve into the world of science and technology and explore its transformative impact on our lives.
Raj Patey: We often kind of divide like the lab's impact into, into three areas to start with kind of energy, water, and waste. I think the really good thing is we can all picture that. We can all identify with that. We can all we can imagine that in our household and then multiply it up in the lab.
Micah: That's Raj Patey Pate, he's business development director at my
Chai: Green Lab.
This organization is on a mission to turn labs worldwide into environmental leaders.
Micah: They do this through certification programs, product labeling, and challenges that promote sustainable practices.
Chai: We'll talk a little more about migraine lab later.
Raj Patey: And I think within that as well, you could also split into kind of lab process.
And then you've got all the things that come into it, which also align with the way that carbon impact is reported as well in terms of like Scope one and two, which relates to process and scope three, which often relates to supply chain as well. But yeah, so you've got. Bits of equipment that use crazy amounts of energy.
For example, things like ultra low temperature freezers and fume and things like that. You've got processes which utilize large amounts of water, solvents and other chemicals, and you've also got processes which. In order to get them done and as their output alongside the science use and then output as waste.
Massive amounts of plastic. I was on a lab tour recently, a large pharma company, and you'll have in each lab racks full of plastic tubes, plastic pipette tips and things like that, and that might only be one or two days worth that you are seeing there in the room. Now, I once spoke. To a lab plastics manufacturer, and they said, oh, we're pretty small in the global industry.
We only made four and a half billion plastic pipette tips last year or something. And if you think that those, those are literally single use by definition bits of plastic, they get used for a very short amount of time and then disposed of. And then I think the other thing is like, why is it so intense?
Is. Most of these operations are going on at minimum nine to five and in quite a lot of scenarios, 20, 24, 7 as well. So you've got all this high intensity application, um, activity, et cetera. That's quite often running all of the time as well.
Micah: And so if you're looking at these three different areas, energy, water, and waste, do you have so to speak, low hanging fruit?
To reduce, uh, environmental impact in some of those areas? Or conversely, are there areas that are really kind of difficult to address?
Raj Patey: It does vary, I think, I think from lab to lab. I mean, on the energy side, for example, we run a thing called the International Freezer Challenge, which is kind of very well known in a lab environment now, and that attacks the low hanging fruit of cold storage in the bar environment.
So if you ever go into a university of farm school, some of these places. You can literally walk down corridors or sides of the lab or whatever, where there's rows of these ULT freezers, and it's not down to kind of minus 10 to minus 20 like you might have at home. It's down to minus 80, and so to keep things at minus 80 is this crazy amount of energy.
In fact, kind of a very broad stat is that. One of those large ults is in order of magnitudes energy equivalent to a household. Yeah. There's houses in different parts of the world, different sizes. It's big, whichever way you look at it. So they know they, and those, and things like fume hoods as well. Um, and maybe centrifuges are also, um, big, big hogs of energy that by, with small tweaks, like for example as the International Freezer Challenge promotes changing them from minus 80 to minus 70.
Can reduce the energy consumption by 20 to 25%, but actually be perfectly safe with a large amount of sample, say, and then you've got things like, yeah, waste. I mean, uh, I, I always, it's a little bit simplistic, but if a lot of your waste is plastic, for example, can you use less plastic? If a lot of that plastic is, for example, disposable gloves, are there different approaches you can take?
Can your protocols be changed and, and things like that?
Micah: And, and whose responsibility is it to think about these things? I mean, who's gonna change the protocol around disposable glove usage? Or who's going to say, yes, the samples are safe at minus 70?
Raj Patey: I guess on a very simplistic level, you could say the lab manager, um, is the lab manager enabled and empowered to do that though is a separate question.
They and their team might have a lot of great ideas. They might work with us on things like our green lab certification program to increase the pool of ideas to drive that harder, but are they enabled, empowered, funded, et cetera. So that, that's where the top down comes really.
Micah: We are seeing more initiatives that empower faculties and individuals to make real change, and the results are already showing.
Chai: Some universities like King's College London have made major strides becoming one of the first to achieve a 100% sustainability accreditation rating for their labs.
Micah: Others, like the University of Bath, have seen annual savings of 11,000 pounds, nearly $15,000 just by making a fractional increase in their freezer temperatures.
Chai: Together these big and small changes show that whether it's a major institutional shift or something smaller scale, every effort counts towards building a more sustainable lab culture.
So can you give us a quick elevator pitch on what Migraine lab does and what exactly it is?
Raj Patey: Sure. I'll do my best. Whether we talk about pharmaceutical labs, university labs, hospital labs, all the other areas, whether are labs. Everyone these days has goals to reduce their environmental impact. And you might hear well what, why?
Why this lab focus? Why are these goals there? Well, labs. Consume massive amounts of water, generate massive amounts of plastic, chemical and other waste, and consume massive amounts of energy. And just, just to throw kind of one stat at that, 'cause people always love stats. The University of Bristol here in the UK actually, which is uh, where I attended, um, they calculated a couple of years ago that, um.
In their campus labs account for about 6% of the square meterage of the campus, but they actually account for over 45% of the energy consumption. So I think in one stat there, you really drive home the high impact of labs. And so at migraine lab, you know, everything starts with awareness. So we offer things like free to access training courses like our migrant lab ambassador program, and also our credit professional program.
And then as you progress through that journey. We have our gold standard Migraine Lab certification program, which is really about driving more sustainable lab operations. It's actually utilized by, um, 42 of the largest pharma and biotech companies globally, alongside many universities. Hospitals are growing and starting using, and areas such as food and beverage.
And then when it comes to the laboratory supply chain side of things, to really enable kind of higher standards and transparency in communications in the lab supply chain, we offer the only third party verified eco label, which has been designed in collaboration with lab suppliers, manufacturers, and lab purchases as well.
It's aligned with the latest EU legislation on greenwashing, and it's approved by the US EPA and really. To finish off, you know, our mission statement is to build a global culture of sustainability and science. So that collaborative approach across the industry is all about achieving that.
Micah: And so you're talking about the ACT eco label, here
Raj Patey: I am, yes.
Yep.
Micah: And what does ACT or a CT stand for in this context?
Raj Patey: A is for accountability. So if you're a manufacturer such as Metler Toledo, it's about you as a manufacturer being accountable for the environmental impacts of the products you put out into the market. And really importantly, I think, for working to reduce that over time.
C is about consistency. Consistency, you can take in several ways. It's about the fact that that act label is measured. Audited, assessed, et cetera. In the same way for every manufacturer, every lab product, be a consumable, a chemical piece of equipment, and T is transparency, which I think remains and has always been, I think the most important letter of the three.
It's about manufacturers being open and honest, and a third party verified, standardized, data-driven way about disclosing where they are today about the environmental impact of their product from manufacturing three to end of life. But really importantly, therefore, they're on a journey of improvement, which is where their customers want them to be.
Chai: And can you describe for us how exactly this label looks like?
Raj Patey: Sure. Yeah. So a really good analogy, which we use a lot. We're all familiar, I think wherever we are in the world, largely with nutrition labels on food in the supermarket, you know, but we're not talking carbohydrates, fat, protein, all that type of thing.
In this case, we're talking laboratory products, sustainability. So things like. What goes on at the factory? What are the energy inputs into the factory? Where are the materials coming from? For example, in the usage phase of the thing, how much energy or water does it use? If it's a bit of equipment, how long does it last?
And that type of thing. And then at the end of life of that product, what's gonna happen to it? Does it end up in landfill? Can the materials be recycled? So picture those as different lines on your nutrition label as it were. But, um, but on your, on your acts eco label and each one of those then being assessed, given a score, just like a lot of nutrition labels in some countries color coded, you know, green scores are better, red scores are areas of improvement and that type of thing.
So that comes together to give you a kind of an overall kind of, uh, health or rating if you like, but also these individual data points.
Chai: So how are these metrics measured?
Raj Patey: In the background, there is a, what we call a, a standardized verification process. For each of the criteria you see on that label, there are defined data points asks, and it really starts with, in each of those manufacturer, first of all, identifies the claims they're looking to make, for example.
At our factory, we are looking to claim that we use 50%, um, sustainably sourced energy from wind, from hydroelectric, from other, from some other source, and that carries on through, we believe that we have 45% recycled aluminum. In the case of this, we offer an end of life recycling scheme, and then the auditors will go through that and they'll say, right, well, you need to verify these claims.
Okay. The way you verify your claims on the energy, for example, is. This documentation that before and after of implementation information, ah, you offer for recycling team, you see the documentation of how you might show that to your customers, how you actually implement it. So if each claim, just like in any audit process, you need to say what you are doing and PR and verify how you are doing it.
And in the background, by the way, that aligns as well with a lot of external global standards as well.
Chai: Yeah. So are there any products that just don't get certified or are really hard to certify
Raj Patey: from an X eco label point of view? Pretty much we've looked to standardize the approach across all chemicals, reagents, antibodies, um, consumables, small and large equipment large, small and large.
If there's somewhere where we have a kind of a boundary right now, although we do have working hands. To extend that boundary at the moment, I would say it's kind of where something is, what I would refer to as kind of building level connected. So when you get into very big infrastructure, so for example, HVAC and air conditioning is an inherent part of every lab from a safety point of view.
We don't act label that. That's kind of building level stuff. And actually there's other agencies that that work very well in that area, but things that connects to that, things like ducty fume hoods, for example. Calculating the energy usage notes is quite complex. We actually have projects in hand to do that at the moment, but right now, our boundaries, if the scientists can touch it, move it directly, control it, that's kind of in some ways where you define our boundary.
I'd say.
Chai: What is the cumulative effect of less energy intensive equipment? For example, like a, A lab balance?
Raj Patey: That's an interesting question actually, because yeah, you'd think of a lab balance of, well, that's a tiny, small thing. It has one of those tiny little power blocks that goes into the wall where the energy consumption of each one is pretty small.
But on the other hand, you can go into some labs and there'll be a lot of them. So you know, that can add up. But actually, I think the other thing as well is. When we look at any type of product, including a lab balance and we look at its environmental impact, its impact on the carbon impact of that lab operation.
This is kind of re an really important point about what we're trying to do with acts and about what we spoke about a bit earlier when we kind of described the label. If you think of like the life cycle of that balance. Energy is a bit of it. Somewhere in the middle, right? It's the bit, it's what, what I'd refer to as the usage phase.
However, what happens before that? Well, it's in a factory, which uses energy to make it. Those materials have to come from somewhere. What's the quantity of those materials? Can they be reduced? Where are they being sourced from? It has to be packaged, et cetera, has to be shipped to the customer, and then when it's broken or no longer utilized by the customer, that balance and that packaging has to go somewhere.
Micah: In some sense, you could argue that piece of equipment that uses a bit more energy but has a longer life cycle, might actually have lower embodied energy. In total than, than something that uses very little energy, but requires more energy to create and dispose of, or has a shorter life cycle.
Raj Patey: Yeah. Let's, let's split that up a little bit.
So lifetime, I think, I guess what you meant by life, you know, how long something lasts is also definitely a consideration for the acts eco label. And yes, to state, to state that hopefully blind the obvious. We want to encourage manufacturers to make things there. Don't die after one year, but last many years and continue to give a, you know, a quality offering for many years.
And included in that is also variables, like ensuring that spare parts are available for, for, for a long time. For example, if it's something that needs servicing or a pair periodically, that that is available, um, for a long period of time. And even after maybe when a product goes out of. Out end of line of manufacturing that it's still supported appropriately.
And I guess, yeah, to answer your question, something could theoretically have a slightly higher energy consumption, but if due to its increased longevity, the time before it needed replacing was a lot longer and therefore there was less, you didn't need to make another one, those will balance out and that really identifies.
Yeah, why we need to look at products in this kind of holistic fashion. Um, let's not ever just zoom in on one stat of a product because that can actually be quite misleading. And that's kind of quite often where things like greenwashing come from. Actually though we found one positive thing to say about this product, and we're gonna carefully not mention any of the rest of them.
Chai: Detecting greenwashing isn't always easy. A product might claim it's recyclable, but if your local facility won't accept contaminated waste, that label doesn't really mean anything.
Micah: So how do we avoid buying greenwash products? According to my Green Lab, we should watch out for vague terms like eco-friendly or green, and look for verified certifications instead.
Chai: Migraine Labs Act eco label. Is a good example, but if it's not available, the more data a product provides about its origins and recyclability, the better
Micah: to make smarter choices. Get to know what your local recycling facilities can handle and stay informed about sustainable practices while pushing for transparency in your lab.
Chai: We already told you about a few sustainability success stories, but what about those organizations that my Green Lab has worked with?
Raj Patey: So GSK, now Global Pharma. They did a, a pilot additionally in three labs and in that pilot exercise they saved around 426,000 kilowatt hours of energy, which is equivalent to 150 tons of CO2 equivalent. They saved 137 million liters of water. And they saved approximately 226,000 US dollars in cost savings in a year, and this was around 14 x um, kind of return on investment on their costs.
In addition to all that CO2 and Money saved, that was a pilot. And the great news is that they're now rolling out that strategy in this program globally across their organization. So lots of numbers there, but either way, through some process change without compromising quality, safety, or anything else they have made.
And that story hangs true in many of our partner organizations.
Micah: And I think part of what I'm also hearing in that story is that. Sustainability is actually profitable in this sense. I mean, it leads to tangible cost savings for a company.
Raj Patey: I'm quite idealistic myself, obviously, but we have to align this with business operations and in fact, sustainability we could argue as only really part of your culture when it's embedded in your, so yeah, no, we see that whether it's labs doing migraine lab certification, we see these monetary return on investments alongside the carbon savings in terms of X in.
Multiples of X out in terms of savings in energy water. And it's not all just so obvious, by the way, energy. It's very easy to understand, oh, I turn my lights on less. I save energy, I have a lower bill, right? If you're in a lab, you have to pay a lot of money to dispose of your toxic waste, for example. So if you can change your operations to reduce your waste output, that's another cost saving.
And if you're a lab supplier. We increasingly see that consumers are so focused in this area that demonstrating that transparency, showing that you're on that journey of improvement through act with your customers is actually enabling more sales, opening more doors. And therefore, speaking to that word profitability that you mentioned,
Micah: you say consumers are focused on this area.
Can you give a sense overall of how focused the laboratory world is on reducing environmental footprint?
Raj Patey: So I and my colleagues go to a number of scientific conferences, trade shows, et cetera, each year. I've been doing this with Migraine Lab for a number of years now, and I feel like there are two common themes at pretty much all of these events.
Now. The first one. Outside of the context of labs is probably people won't be surprised at. It's kind of the transition to cloud computing, data automation, ai, you know, that's a hot topic in science, just like it is everywhere. Do you know what the other one is? That all of them, it's sustainability.
There's sustainability tracks in all the talks or the manufacturers are trying to underst how they can, how they can, um, present themselves as more sustainable to, to their customers and that, and that type of thing. And then I think the other thing just added kind of second kind of validation. On that as well is, um, in Europe especially, you know, a lot of businesses done through, through tenders and framework agreements, and the bit of info that myself and one of my colleagues who looks into this a bit, has started to pick up quite a lot just in the last year, is in all these agreements, everyone looks at price.
Obviously prices are given. You've gotta get your price about right. Everyone sells something to, to someone. There's all these other criteria. What's rising to the top regularly as after price, the next most important criteria, sustainability. And when it's being put into those kind of those high level agreements points are being awarded, businesses being one off the basis of it, et cetera.
So I think that's a really good indicator as well.
Chai: You mentioned that sustainability is a bit of a buzzword at the conferences that you go to, but what are the most common misconceptions about lab sustainability and how do you address them?
Raj Patey: So I think you could harness it, first of all, in just a few words, cost, safety process. People go, oh, I want to be greener.
I want to be more sustainable, but it costs me more. Right. Well, we've already talked quite a lot about how that is a myth, and also I think what's fair to say is that that statement had a bit more value a number of years ago, but the market is shifting so fast too. If you want to be part of this market, you need to be working to be more sustainable with your customers, that the pricing is sorting itself out.
The other, I think, yeah, misconceptions around, oh, but. Will it impact my safety in my laboratory? Absolutely not to be clear, everything that we, um, recommend guide towards, et cetera, and things like the Migraine Lab certification program run parallel with and are designed to sit. It's hand in hand with quality, output, safe outcomes.
And you could even make arguments sometimes that a more sustainable lab is even a safe lab in the sense of, for example, you know, if you switch away from very toxic chemicals to chemicals that are safer to handle that, you know, you can have inherent gains like that and that and that type of thing. And then I guess processes along the same side of things.
It's funny. Scientists, you know, are all about bettering and furthering the world. But scientists are also incredibly conservative. Why? Why do we do a process this way? Why do we use that bit of equipment? Well, we've always done it that way, and I learned that from, you know, my prophet university or my PI at university when I was a, so I've just carried on doing the same thing or whatever.
So, yeah, that, that's the other one that needs to be overcome as well.
Micah: But many lab managers are stepping up their sustainability game.
Chai: An estimated 82% of labs have already implemented measures like cutting carbon emissions, reducing energy use, and improving waste management.
Micah: Efficiency and environmental safety are the biggest drivers behind these changes and labs in the uk.
US and China are leading the charge with widespread adoption of sustainability metrics.
Chai: Reducing emissions is the most common action, especially in environmental testing and life science research.
Micah: There is of course much more work to do on this, but so far results are promising. Which makes one wonder what else could be possible in the future of this field?
Raj Patey: First of all, labs continue to innovate in terms of what they deliver to society, and they continue to do that in a high quality way. And if you're a commercial organization that's profitable and all those types of things as well. As we talked about, they're potentially safer and lowering costs and that type of thing, but really.
Speak to our own mission. They work in a way that leaves the planet in a better place for future generations. Not a worser place where they've truly embedded a global culture of sustainability within themselves and in wider science. And science is therefore leading the way. Now, we often say in terms now.
We say sometimes, you know, if science can't lead the way in sustainability, then, then who can? Because you know, you've got the most educated, well-informed people in, in the globe. You could argue. And I think just to add one point to that, what do we talk about when we talk about, you know, a, a culture of sustainability And also you, to relate to your question before actually, how can manufacturers think about this more is sustainability is not an add-on.
It's not like. We made a product, for example, oh right. What should we do about sustainability now to market it or whatever. Sustainability is something where if you are in the lab and you are designing new processes, you are designing a new lab building. Even you think about how can we set up this whole operation to be lower impact and to be more sustainable whilst still achieving its aim?
And if you're a lab product, when I, you know, we sit down with a, a metaphorical. Probably computer screen, but blank sheets of paper to design that next lab product. How can it be designed in such a way that it achieves the aims that the organization wants and the customer wants, but maybe it's lower impact to manufacture.
It uses better materials. It lasts a longer time to speak to one of your questions earlier. It uses less energy. If it's using energy, it's, and it, when it finally reaches end of life, it's easy to dispose of and recycle the materials in an appropriate way and that type of thing. And I think at that point, if everyone's.
Planning their experiments and their products like that. That's, you know, where we hope things to be alongside the, the broader statements.
Chai: Now can you let listeners know how they can find ACT certified products?
Raj Patey: Yeah, if you go to act.my green lab.org online, you will find the ACT database there and you will find, I think it's pushing 1007 1,800 products there at the moment from, I think it's around somewhere between 40 and 50 manufacturers.
And what's really exciting actually is as we are now in the process of. From Act one to two, you'll see Act two products start to appear there in the coming months as well. And you'll actually start to see, having only launched Act two a few months ago now, you'll actually see the number of products there.
Chai: So you touched on there being a transition into the new Act label two. Uh, was there a big difference from Act Label one or is it. Just in the design.
Raj Patey: It's really an evolution, a learning of lessons learned over many years. Little bit of background. So actor has been a process we've been going through in the background for over a year.
It's kind of built by the industry for the industry. So we have a steering committee in the background of manufacturers. Key buyers from farm, academia and elsewhere, and a range of technical experts. And they really were given a task of we need to, in 2025 for the next few years, um, have rebalanced the needs and the wants of the two stakeholders.
They're manufacturers and they're consumers, and they. Don't always agree, funnily enough, in terms of in terms of what they, in terms of what they want out of it. In terms of the changes, you know, underlying it still looks and feels quite similar. It's about communicating the attributes that we talked about in a clear way, but we try to improve that as well.
So for example, in an Act one label, you might see product context seven. You might, oh, what does a seven mean? In Act two, it's very clear. It says recycled renewable content in this product is 60% of which. 80% is recyclable, so you've improved some of the language and communication and things like that.
We've also adding that weighting around carbon impact that we talked earlier to better align again with what consumers are asking for and to better guide manufacturers to drive future improvements. Um, it's, it's a single globally applicable label like we talked about before. Whereas before we had the, the, um.
The re, the regional labels. And I think the final thing I'd mention as well is that we've worked hard in the background with some external agencies, including the US EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency, and also agencies in Europe and in Germany, to align with the latest European legislation around eu, uh, green claims and greenwashing and things like that to ensure that it's aligned with today's legislation, today's best practice, and that type of thing as well.
Micah: Can I just key in on interesting point you made, you said that consumers and manufacturers are not always aligned on what they want or what they need. Can you talk a little bit more about that?
Raj Patey: I mean, I guess on one level, and this could slightly sound slightly cynical, but it's the reality sometimes, of course, you know, in, in a kind of supply purchase environment.
Consumers want one thing. Manufacturers might, oh, that's not possible. I can give you this instead. Or, I want to give you this because it's easier. Or that, of course, at the core of our organization, we, we want to drive improvement. So there are things in act two, which are quite a lot more difficult for manufacturers to achieve in, in Act one, for example.
That's where the consumers like, well, we need you to push them harder to keep improving. Finding happy mediums in area, in areas like that. And I think a second example, just getting slightly more technical, is one of the new things actually we added to Act two that wasn't on Act one, is there's a section for, um, what we call product carbon reporting.
So one of the hot questions that comes from consumers very regularly now is, oh, we want to see what we call an LCA lifecycle analysis of every product. So there's a product carbon number or product carbon footprint number. Um. On each product. Now, this is actually a very costly wieldy exercise for anyone to go through, and it's something like the lab product industry where you have so many millions of items and sizes and variations.
Um, there are a lot of challenges around this. So what we've tried to do is acknowledge the fact that the consumers demanding that this level now, but that's not necessarily achievable in 2025. It's, it's a goal for the longer term. But manufacturers need to guide in that direction. So where manufacturers have that data already, there's a place to put it on the label.
But really importantly, we made a point of saying, but there's no standardization on how to gather these numbers at the moment. There are some ISO standards and things they don't even fulfill their. What we need in terms standardization. So we put the number on there, but we identifying the label, it was done to this standard, or it was self-declared, it was homemade, whatever it was.
And that meets the consumer demand for seeing the number, but educates 'em at the same time that they're not necessarily comparable.
Chai: So just to wrap up our conversation here, what advice would you give to researchers who want to increase sustainability in their practices at work?
Raj Patey: Before you start changing anything, just educate yourself a little bit. If you want to start somewhere really simple, Google Mud Green Lab Ambassador. And as I said, as I mentioned earlier, that's free to access training.
It takes no more than about an hour of your time to take part in you. Watch some fun videos. So the first videos, for example, is on energy In the lab. It talks about things like, well, why are we leaving us all night? Just for the convenience of not having to wait for it to warm up in the morning, start to build your awareness.
One of the lessons out of one of the modules in that little training thing actually is. Then take that to just dedicate 15 minutes of each lab meeting each week to sustainability. So. Of course tackle the things that are important in making sure the lab's operating. But one of the things we've observed over the years that in most labs there are people sitting there literally going, oh, I'd love to do this to make our lab more sustainable.
And they just need to be enabled, empowered, given, given time to, to voice their passion. And then start you thinking about programs like Migraine Lab certification that we mentioned, which enabled you to actually in a standardized and third party verified way, understand where you are today. Receive lots of guidance, feedback, and education on how to improve.
And also as part of that, delivers some of those cost savings and carbon savings that we talked about earlier.
Micah: We've been speaking to Raj Patey Pate, business development director at My Green Lab kind. What were some of your takeaways from the conversation?
Chai: Well, the scale of lab emissions is truly shocking. About 20 tons of carbon per lab. That's just a huge figure.
Micah: Yeah, I was really struck by the scale as well. On the flip side, I was very glad to hear that things are changing for the better.
For instance, the initiatives, uh, by GSK saving $226,000 in a year, the University of Bath saving $11,000 through its sustainability initiatives, and I think it's important to note that. Obviously this results in a reduction in emissions, a reduction in waste, and of course, also savings for the organizations and institutions undertaking them, which provides some additional incentive as well.
Chai: But of course, greenwashing does remain a challenge. There are really issues with the limited recycling options and a lot of incomplete data surrounding where and how are the best ways to recycle. But fact-based certifications are a strong tool for helping lab managers make better informed decisions.
This has been balancing the future from METTLER TOLEDO.
Micah: What questions about science and technology would you like answered in a future episode?
Chai: Let us know. By leaving a review or if you listen on Spotify, leave us a message in the comments section
Micah: and be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
