Building a Green Lab

Many laboratories focus on being environmentally friendly with their chemical disposal techniques and research methods, but you can also go green with your lab design and layout. By choosing the right lab furniture, controlling the utility usage, and looking at how you dispose of waste, you can create a lab that saves energy and uses sustainable practices on a daily basis. In the end, you’ll find that going green helps reduce your overall utility costs plus gives your organization something to take pride in.

Close the Fume Hood Sash

Fume hoods are vital to the safety of a lab, especially when employees are using dangerous chemicals. This piece of lab furniture pulls dangerous fumes up and out of the area when needed while fresh air is pumped back in via the building’s HVAC system. While many labs require the air to be fully cycled a minimum of six times every hour, if you leave the fume hood sash open when it’s not in use, that number increases. That’s because air is being pulled up through the hood whether there are chemicals in use or not. By instructing your employees to always close the hood’s sash when it’s not in use, you’ll greatly reduce your overall utility usage.

This reduction can be very significant. Experts estimate it’s possible to save as much as $3,000 a year simply by closing the sash on a single laboratory fume hood. If you have multiple labs with multiple fume hoods in each, the savings can quickly add up.

Understand Your Lab

People outside your lab, including administrators, may believe you can simply shut down all of your equipment when everyone leaves for the day, but you probably know that’s impossible. While you can turn off things such as vacuum pumps, drying ovens, and water baths, there may be some tools and equipment that needs to remain running overnight. That’s why it’s useful to designate one person in the lab as the point person for implementing environmentally-friendly ideas. This person should be familiar with all of the equipment in use and know what can and cannot be shut down regularly.

Create an Inventory System

While it may not necessarily reduce your overall utility costs, knowing what chemicals you have on hand will help decrease the amount of waste you create. It will also help reduce what you spend, too. Know what you have stored in your lab cabinets so that you don’t re-order something you already have on hand. This will help you reduce the amount of the chemical that is wasted because it goes unused. Installing cabinets with glass doors can help with this, but you also need to create a full inventory system that makes it each to know when chemicals have been depleted.

Go Green from the Start

With more companies becoming more environmentally aware, many manufacturers have started offering equipment that is designed to be energy-efficient. You can look for these products, tools, and other items to help make your lab as green as possible right from the start.

Another way of making your lab more environmentally friendly is by installing the right fume hoods, cabinets, and other furniture early on. Contact us to learn more about building a green lab.