Three Georgia Tech labs are leading the charge in resource efficiency.
Laboratories are central to Georgia Tech’s mission of driving groundbreaking research, innovative discoveries, and life-saving technology. However, these labs are also significant consumers of resources. With nearly 900,000 square feet of campus lab space, labs use, on average, 10 times the electricity and four times the water of a typical classroom. They also produce most of the hazardous waste on campus. In 2023, Environmental Health and Safety (EH&S) brought the issue to the attention of the Office of Sustainability, which led the charge in 2024 to launch a My Green Lab working group and sponsored three campus labs to work toward certification, including the School of Biological Sciences Instructional Labs, the Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience’s Molecular Evolution Core Facility, and the Takayama Lab.
My Green Lab is an international community of scientists dedicated to making laboratories more sustainable and resource-efficient. To achieve My Green Lab certification, each lab conducted an initial assessment to evaluate their current sustainability practices and identified areas of improvement, including waste, water, and electricity. Labs were encouraged to adopt measures such as defrosting and cleaning refrigerator coils, using timers for test equipment, and promoting best practices. Alicia Wood-Jones, Lab and Safety Officer for EH&S, was a key leader in the working group. Known for her work on the Chemical Reclamation Committee, Wood-Jones’ vision and drive are instrumental in finding innovative solutions to long-standing challenges in lab decommissioning.
She thanks her colleagues, including the EH&S Lab and Chemical Safety Team, “for their help and vision. We believe that even small steps forward can make a big difference here at Georgia Tech. I am so appreciative to all involved. I look forward to future collaborations with lab members on campus.”
Katherine Nguyen and her team in the Takayama Lab construct multicellular models and dissect cell signaling pathways to understand disease physiology. While pursuing this research, the lab team activated measures to responsibly manage their lab resources, such as recycling in the lab, keeping centrifuges at room temperature when not needed, and consolidating orders.
“I’m incredibly happy and proud to have been a part of this program and appreciate everyone’s hard work to try to make Georgia Tech a more sustainable campus,” she said. “Our lab was the first academic lab at Georgia Tech to get certified. Sometimes, graduate students want to be greener, but don’t know how to or feel like we have the power to. My Green Lab helped identify feasible options for labs to reduce their waste. Even if labs couldn’t make every single change, any improvement is a positive change.”
Sustainability efforts at the Molecular Evolution Core Laboratory are led by Anton Bryksin, Shweta Biliya, and Adam Fallah. The lab is pioneering Tip-Cycle, a program that sterilizes and recycles pipettes for reuse. This lab also monitors campus blackwater for diseases such as Covid-19, using thousands of pipettes in their work. Faced with resource constraints during the pandemic, these researchers developed innovative solutions to maximize resource efficiency. “We’ve always wanted to make our lab practices more sustainable, but weren’t sure where to start. My Green Lab gave us the tools and guidance to turn that intention into action. This certification represents the dedication of our entire team to create a more sustainable environment,” said Biliya, a Georgia Tech research scientist.
The My Green Lab initiative offers an approach for transforming campus labs into more efficient spaces while producing less hazardous waste. By prioritizing sustainability in our labs, Georgia Tech can have both a global reputation for research and responsible resource management.
Visit the Office of Sustainability for more information on My Green Lab.
Additional Images
