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Laboratory Practices
Mar. 7th, 2012 02:13 pmSo, my postdoc advisor has returned from a four-month trip to Germany, and from the sound of things, certain experiences during his trip had a profound revelatory effect on him. One of those experiences was the observation of differences in how waste was managed in those labs relative to our lab here in Texas.
[I should note that it felt like I stepped back ten years in time when I moved out here and started looking into the recycling situation. Whereas cities like Seattle are trying to move closer to zero waste, this place still supplies gigantic household trash bins and avid home recycling aficionados must sort, haul, and drop off their own recyclables. I cannot recycle green glass in Bryan, although I can recycle chipboard, at least. The whole thing is a bit odd and annoying, for I pay the same amount for my trash disposal where I take out the bin once every two months as my neighbors pay for their weekly trash disposal.]
Anyway, it sounds like the German labs had a well-organized waste stream, with separate receptacles in the lab for the disposal of organic materials, recyclables of various flavors, and trash. I'm excited and happy to set up something similar in our lab here, as we currently throw away a lot of potentially reuseable and recyclable materials. One of the more exciting components for me will involve closing the loop on insect diet waste. For instance, I brought remnants from my last experiment home and put the remnants into the worm bin, which the worms will turn into soil. Our lab also goes through a lot of soil and vermiculite in the preparation of wheatgrass for the grasshopper cultures. So it's time for me to put a couple of five-gallon buckets into the grasshopper room so I can take home the remaining soil/seed/fungus after the grasshoppers are finished. Hey, it's free potting soil, as far as I'm concerned!
Really, though, I think it would be most amazing and awesome to push for a broader initiative across research labs. This is a difficult topic, however. When writing grants, faculty have learned to ask for as much money as they can get, for as many different aspects of their research project as possible. That translates into asking for extra funds to get an extra set of disposable plastic test tubes just for one small purpose. Instead, I'm imagining how cool it would be if labs could be green-certified along the lines of how buildings are green-certified. This would require an auditing system, however, which could be hard to implement. Plus, how could a person compare a lab that burns through resources against a lab that hardly uses anything? While I actually think that such a comparison should be made, it would add to the burden of justification for many labs, many of which have pretty good justifications for why they use so much stuff.
[I should note that it felt like I stepped back ten years in time when I moved out here and started looking into the recycling situation. Whereas cities like Seattle are trying to move closer to zero waste, this place still supplies gigantic household trash bins and avid home recycling aficionados must sort, haul, and drop off their own recyclables. I cannot recycle green glass in Bryan, although I can recycle chipboard, at least. The whole thing is a bit odd and annoying, for I pay the same amount for my trash disposal where I take out the bin once every two months as my neighbors pay for their weekly trash disposal.]
Anyway, it sounds like the German labs had a well-organized waste stream, with separate receptacles in the lab for the disposal of organic materials, recyclables of various flavors, and trash. I'm excited and happy to set up something similar in our lab here, as we currently throw away a lot of potentially reuseable and recyclable materials. One of the more exciting components for me will involve closing the loop on insect diet waste. For instance, I brought remnants from my last experiment home and put the remnants into the worm bin, which the worms will turn into soil. Our lab also goes through a lot of soil and vermiculite in the preparation of wheatgrass for the grasshopper cultures. So it's time for me to put a couple of five-gallon buckets into the grasshopper room so I can take home the remaining soil/seed/fungus after the grasshoppers are finished. Hey, it's free potting soil, as far as I'm concerned!
Really, though, I think it would be most amazing and awesome to push for a broader initiative across research labs. This is a difficult topic, however. When writing grants, faculty have learned to ask for as much money as they can get, for as many different aspects of their research project as possible. That translates into asking for extra funds to get an extra set of disposable plastic test tubes just for one small purpose. Instead, I'm imagining how cool it would be if labs could be green-certified along the lines of how buildings are green-certified. This would require an auditing system, however, which could be hard to implement. Plus, how could a person compare a lab that burns through resources against a lab that hardly uses anything? While I actually think that such a comparison should be made, it would add to the burden of justification for many labs, many of which have pretty good justifications for why they use so much stuff.
