Martin Farley: common standards are needed to reduce the environmental impact of laboratory research
A bibliometric analysis published in 2014 estimated that published scientific output doubles every nine years. With new knowledge, the environmental footprint from its creation also increases, particularly in laboratory sciences. It is, therefore, more and more important to find ways to regulate the environmental impact of research, said Martin Farley, the director of the Green Lab Associates initiative, at the conference on sustainable science in Tartu.
Martin Farley is one of the first sustainable laboratory science experts in the UK and Europe who has published an article on reducing the environmental impact of laboratory science in the Nature journal. Farley noted that three scopes of carbon footprint can be distinguished in the case of research labs. The first is caused by the gas used for heating, the second by energy consumption, and the third by materials used in research. The first two can be quite easily measured and compensated with renewable energy solutions. However, the carbon emissions associated with materials are the most difficult to follow, as there is often no information on the environmental impact of the production chain of different products.
Sustainable science is a matter of the researcher’s conscience
For example, at King’s College London, where Farley worked until recently as the head of sustainable science, it was found that 12 per cent of the university’s CO2 emissions were related to the campus energy consumption, and 83 per cent came from various materials purchased for day-to-day work (e.g. office supplies and laboratory consumables). More than 40 per cent of the CO2 emissions were related to science.
Farley says that regardless of the continuing need to elaborate the methodology, this shows that the environmental impact of science is considerable. “If we estimate the carbon footprint based on the financial spend in a line of research, in clinical research alone, the CO2 emissions can be 100 megatons per year. That would make it on par with Bangladesh or Venezuela in terms of emissions,” Farley said. However, the energy intensity of life sciences is well illustrated by the example of ultra-low temperature freezers used in biobanks. Farley noted that one freezer of this kind consumes approximately as much electricity in a year as an average UK household.
However, solutions that could help reduce the environmental impact of science are relatively slow to come around. On the one hand, the rule that reuse is always better than single-use applies here, too. In clinical research, however, this is not always possible due to the specific nature of the procedures. On the other hand, finding and introducing feasible solutions is still complicated. “If you want to be safe in your lab, there are standards. Health and safety standards are commonplace. There is nothing like that in sustainability, and reducing the physical environmental impact of research is still a matter of everyone’s conscience,” said Farley. He argued that here, too, we need standards that would enable us to achieve better results in reducing the environmental impact of our activities.
Sustainability research needs funders’ support
Alongside the procedures involved in research, what is researched is important. Here, those who distribute research funding play an essential role. Farley cited an example from the UNESCO Science Report 2021 that in 2019, nearly 150,000 articles on artificial intelligence and robotics were published in scientific journals, while just 2,500 publications on carbon capture.
According to Farley, more funders are starting to think about how to pay more attention to reducing the environmental impact of research. For example, the Green Charter of Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions points out environment-supporting activities to be considered both when planning and implementing a research project submitted to them for funding. To support all this, various networks have been set up in different European countries to help reduce the environmental impact of laboratory science.
This is also the role of the Laboratory Efficiency Assessment Framework (LEAF), set up at Farley’s initiative at King's College London. LEAF aims to harmonise the standards for sustainable laboratories worldwide, thereby making it easier to implement environmentally sustainable laboratory practices.
Watch Farley’s presentation on UTTV, starting at 9:45.
