Going Green in the Lab

After a devastating fire took place in University of Nottingham's GlaxoSmithKline's brand new lab construction site set to open in 2015, they were bound and determined to create the environmentally friendly lab they had first set out to make.

The "Going green in the lab" article by Emma Davies states this lab will be "carbon neutral in 25 years", so they were determined to create something special.Every piece of equipment and construction of the building were scrutinized when it came to its embedded carbon - down to the door handles.

And beyond construction, green practices are expected such as sharing fume hoods (fume cupboards) and preserving helium consumption to assist in making the building have a quick carbon "payback" time.

This article also shares stories of other labs' activities to "go green" such as using gray water when possible, providing modular labs to change when the researchers need it, and not using freezers at their ultra-low temperatures if they don't need to be.

The GlaxoSmithKline lab is still under construction, but when complete it should be a very impressive lab that sets sustainability standards.

Currently under construction, the £15.8 million build is part-funded by UK pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK).The university says the building will be carbon neutral in 25 years – the time it will take for excess energy created by the building to provide enough carbon credits to ‘pay back' carbon used in its manufacture.

Read the entire article,"Going green in the lab" by Emma Davies.