Washington University in St. Louis
IN-9: Green Laboratories

Practices for purchasing newer, efficient equipment; combining freezer space; fault detection; retrocommisioning lab spaces to ensure air flow is not greater than needed for safety. The university has conducted a study to identify labs that have once through cooling systems and is working to re-engineer those systems to reduce potable water use. The Environmental Health and Safety office has established policies regarding chemical use and disposal. Content from website: Best practices for Energy Savings: - Turn off the lights when the lab is unoccupied, or when daylight is adequate (use task lighting instead). - Light only the rooms in use. - Keep chemical fume hood doors closed and engage dampers on point source ventilators when not in use - Tissue culture hoods can be kept closed and with UV on when not in use - Do not use incubators as refrigerators - Autoclave doors should be shut when not in use - Empty and shut-off little-used refrigerators and freezers. - Defrost and clean out old storage items. - Walk-in cold room temperatures can be raised from 4ºC to 7ºC - Replace old equipment with energy star devices - Turn refrigerated equipment temperatures up during the day, turn heated equipment temperatures down during the day except when in use - Turn any equipment off whenever not in use. Most takes 10-20 minutes to come to set temperature - Refrigerated floor model centrifuges should be kept off with lids left open when not in use Best practices for reducing Chemical Use: - Use the on-campus EH&S chemical inventory system to share reagent chemicals (or to transfer them to another principal investigator) within your department - Seek ways to minimize hazardous chemical use. See MIT’s free Green Chemical Alternatives Wizard - Whenever possible utilize digital technology for x-ray and photography needs. - Remove any mercury thermometers from labs for safer alternatives. - Utilize rechargeable batteries in place of non-recycleable alkaline batteries; when they are spent, contact EH&S for pickup. - When washing glassware, minimize solvent rinsing and minimize water use as much as possible. Avoid halogenated reagents if possible - Alternate methods to wet chemical spectroscopy (Both manual wet chemistry methods and automated continuous flow analyzers (CFA) methods generate large amounts of waste.) - Look into potential changes in equipment and supplies to minimize material usage such as use of mini-scintillation vials in place of regular sized vials. Best Practices for Materials Management: Recycle all possible non-highly odiferous, non-hazardous material (no biological, chemical and/or radioactive contamination) in laboratory waste streams: - Steel - Aluminum cans - Cardboard - Paper (including binders, spiral notebooks and envelopes) - Plastics (#1-7): All non p-listed chemical containers can be recycled if triple rinsed first. DO NOT recycle food, ice, liquids or Styrofoam. If what you want to recycle is too large for the bin, please rinse it per the guidelines above and place it next to the recycling bin for pickup. List any unwanted, useable furniture or equipment on Washington University’s Purchasing Services Surplus Property website - Collect unwanted or surplus lab equipment from your department to donate to Engineers Without Borders, who has a partnership with the Department of Podiatry to send equipment to clinics in Africa. Email ewbwashu@gmail.com.