Study Asks If Sustainability Success Impacts Local Communities
By Mark Miller
Research and clinical laboratories are making substantial efforts to achieve their sustainability goals and help combat the global climate crisis. They are focused on improving resource management, reducing waste and CO2 emissions, conserving energy, and bringing greater attention to environmental issues.
Their work extends to the companies that supply and serve them. Thermo Fisher Scientific, for example, supports these labs by creating environmentally responsible product packaging, developing energy-efficient equipment, offering greener products through its distribution channels, and pursuing and measuring its own aggressive climate goals, among many other initiatives.
Higher education also contributes. Many universities have established sustainable lab programs as part of their overall environmental aspirations and curricula. One such institution, North Carolina State University, has published a study that asks: Do universities that score well on sustainability measures have a positive environmental effect in their local communities?
Good News and Bad News
According to the article “Are universities connected to local sustainability? A new study suggests yes...and no.” on ScienceDaily.com, researchers from NC State examined data from 105 U.S. metropolitan areas that are local to 427 institutions of higher learning. The team used the U.S. Cities Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Index—which scores municipal sustainability—and the QS Sustainability Universities Ranking—which evaluates educational sustainability—to understand the relationship between municipalities that achieved high marks on the SDG and schools that did well on the QS Sustainability Universities Ranking.
They found a correlation between high-scoring universities and communities that “score well on innovation, reducing poverty, creating economic opportunities, and reducing inequality,” the ScienceDaily.com article states. However, Ha Vien, first author of the study, said that the team also discovered “that universities that perform strongly on sustainability measures are also associated with a decline in responsible consumption and production—measured here as increased air pollution and release of toxic chemicals—in their surrounding areas.”
Acting Locally with Lab Coats
The NC State study’s mixed outcomes resonate with today’s labs’ environmental endeavors. They pursue sustainable practices that, over time, promise to have a larger positive impact. These pursuits may seem like small steps in some cases, but as labs consider everything from water usage to replacing single-use plastic consumables with reusable glass, each component of their environmental agendas becomes critical.
For example, San Diego State University (SDSU) found that lab coats present a significant opportunity to improve sustainability. The school is piloting lab coat vending machines to help ensure that lab coats are reused and that researchers always have access to clean, protective garments.
As the article “Pressed for Safety: Lab coat vending machines arrive on campus” from SDSU points out, researchers working with chemicals and hazardous materials require lab coats and other personal protective equipment to help ensure safety. But used lab coats can often get left behind in closets, contributing to (possibly harmful) waste. The lab coat vending program promotes reuse by enabling researchers to deposit used coats and swipe a card at one of the vending machines to retrieve a fresh coat in the size they need.
Time and Effort
The NC State study indicates that programs such as the lab coat vending machines at SDSU may ultimately connect to broader change, but that change doesn’t occur overnight. “It took significant time and effort for universities to become the economic drivers that we see today,” added Vien. “Climate change will continue to be a defining challenge for the foreseeable future. Our findings highlight that there are still a lot of opportunities for higher education to make more of a difference in surrounding communities.” Labs will continue to embrace these opportunities, too, and work with businesses and academia to bring about a more pervasive sustainable transformation.
Mark Miller is a Thermo Fisher Scientific staff writer.
