Environmental Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of research laboratory protocols

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Medical research laboratories have traditionally concentrated on carrying out the best scientific research for newdiscoveries in medicine. However, we are all aware now of the importance of Climate Change and other environmental aspects of daily life like waste management, pollution, problems with single use plastics etc. Research laboratories use a lot of plastic items (e.g. PPE, gloves, equipment etc) and we know that laboratory plastics disposal makes up about 2 % of all plastics waste globally. We also know that with new knowledge and measurements, and some changes in practices, we can greatly reduce such material and energy consumptions, making our science discoveries much more environmentally friendly. Work done very recently by the Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) shows that most of their environmental and carbon footprints are caused by the work that goes on in the laboratories (rather than from commuting to work there or for heating or lighting in its buildings).Our project is a joint effort therefore by the world renowned ICR and the Centre for Environment & Sustainability at the nearby University of Surrey to carefully measure the environmental footprint of several laboratory procedures at the ICR and, with their scientists, to re-design or adapt them to make them more 'sustainable' - without compromising the quality of the science. This is a ground-breaking project as our 'gold standard' for environmental impact assessment (known as LCA) has only been used very little on such studies. It is undoubtedly the best approach to get real, meaningful data that will help guide the improvements to the science footprint and, as well as measuring what we do presently, we will also be testing out new ways of doing these lab procedures and measuring the improvements.We are sure that high quality environmental data will be highly respected by the scientists at ICR (and much more widely) and will help to bring valuable innovation into the ways we go about making the new, and more sustainable, medical discoveries of the future.