Overall Rating Gold
Overall Score 76.41
Liaison Krista Bailey
Submission Date Dec. 12, 2023

STARS v2.2

Pennsylvania State University
IN-19: Green Laboratory Program

Status Score Responsible Party
Complete 0.50 / 0.50 Krista Bailey
Sustainable Campus Strategist
Sustainability Institute
"---" indicates that no data was submitted for this field

Does the institution have or participate in a green laboratory program?:
Yes

Does the institution’s green laboratory program address the following?:
Yes or No
Energy conservation and efficiency, e.g., fume hood ("shut the sash") and freezer maintenance programs Yes
Water conservation and efficiency Yes
Chemical use and disposal Yes
Materials management, e.g., green purchasing guidelines and recycling and reuse programs Yes
Training for lab users on sustainable practices Yes

A brief description of the institution's green laboratory program:
In June 2021 a group from Penn State Sustainability, lab managers, and researchers on campus asked: What would a Sustainable Lab program look like at Penn State?

The result was the conceptualization of the novel Sustainable Lab Ambassador (SLA) program. The proposed SLA program utilizes the My Green Lab (MGL) professional certification process as a living lab for students to engage in evaluating, improving, and assessing the sustainability of laboratories on campus.

In the summer of 2022, the project received funding to launch the pilot SLA project in the fall of 2022 with five student ambassadors working in five different labs.

Project Goals

Exploring and assessing the anticipated mutually beneficial role that an individual undergraduate SLA can play during a research lab’s MGL certification effort and determining the levels to which the ambassador-lab pairing strategy benefits the student and the lab.
Identifying the prerequisite introductory knowledge needed to implement sustainable research laboratory practices and developing this educational content into a prerequisite Introduction to Sustainability in the Research Lab microcredential badge.
Developing a series of skill-building tasks, educational activities, and their associated learning objectives to be accomplished by SLAs to support and augment their lab’s certification effort.
Developing a Carbon Footprint Analysis of a Research Lab microcredential badge that compares before/after energy usage data to quantify the impact of sustainability interventions in the laboratory.
Determining the effectiveness of having SLA support for the MGL certification process by comparing metrics with labs who do not have this support.

Website URL where information about the green laboratory program is available:

Optional Fields 

Additional documentation to support the submission:
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Data source(s) and notes about the submission:
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