Green Labs
Craig Rowell
Saturday, 07 June 2008 21:00 UTC
I recently saw this conference announcement. If time allows I plan on attending this meeting to see what the state of the industry is for greening the lab.
To green science we have to look at both the small steps (i.e. thoughtful use of resources, recycling tip racks, not printing out every paper that might be interesting – use Connotea) and the large such as hood and refridgeration design. So I hope to post back later that I will be attending this event.
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Replies
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Craig,
The Labs21 is an excellent conference for engineers, architects and energy managers for laboratory buildings. Scientists like us are a bit of an oddity, and I encourage you to go. We can learn a lot to promote excellent design and the latest technologies if we serve on a design committee, and we can teach some as well. Visit the Labs21 tool box on the website, and get some of your company A&E staff to attend. They will make your labs hum with good design. I gave a talk there last year, “Occupants Matter” which oriented the A&E crowd to what researchers can do after they deliver an energy intensive, (hopefully efficient) building to us. I also just spoke in St. Louis at the Association for Public Health Labs conference, “Bottom up and Top Down strategies for Greening Your Lab.” They are just beginning to think about this, and I stirred the pot a little bit. There is not a lot at the Labs21 conference about lab practices. I invite you to visit our UCSB website for Laboratory Research And Technical Staff (LabRATS), which has dozens of best practices and ten different initiatives on campus.
Thanks for starting this group. I just joined.http://sustainability.ucsb.edu/LARS/. We are alway grateful for constructive feedback.
You also may want to attend the UC/CSU/CCC sustainability conference in San Luis Obispo, July 31-Aug 2. It may be open to private sector attendees. We will present a session on sustainable laboratory purchasing,http://sustainability.calpoly.edu/trackPRO.html#pro3
For California University related researchers interested in green advances, this is a green mine! For other parts of the country, almost every university has “sustainability” programs, and laboratories are rarely focused on. There are conferences all over the country; see http://www.aashe.org/index.php
Their biannual conference is in Raleigh, NC next fall.On energy efficiency and building integration:
That’s all for now. Glad to hear people in the private sector want to green their labs. Perhaps we can chat on the phone or have a conference call. Allen Doyle, UCSB LabRATS
When asking manufacturers why they don’t make energy star equipment, they tell me, “because no one ever asked.” As scientists, let’s start asking simple questions and making stands for efficiency. Why buy an incubator to maintain room temperature (25 degrees C) that uses as much electricity as one house? It then dumps waste heat into a room and it drives up the air conditioning for an entire building. There are smart solutions to this, and it takes good trouble shooting, design and communication. -
Thanks Allen. I will pass along the other conferences you mentioned to others in the organization. I believe we are reaching the critical mass of interest to get things going.
Craig
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