That means changing the default settings, behaviors, or protocols in your laboratory.
While the associated savings can be dramatic, this also makes driving change easier for you.
Let’s discover what is possible and how it can save time, money, and frustration:
Today's Lesson: Setting Greener Standards
How to establish a more sustainable baseline
Number of the Day
The beauty of changing standards is that you only have to do it once. If you change your PCR cycler holding temperature once, you can save more than 30% of energy. The same applies to freezers: if you set your freezer temperature to -70°C, you can often save more than 27% of electricity. If you use smaller Petri dishes for routine cell culture maintenance, you can save over 60% of plastic. There are surprisingly many standards that you can change to make your lab greener.
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Rethinking Your Standards
Setting new defaults is so effective because it happens at the level of the process, not at the level of the individual scientist.
That means you save time and increase impact because you do not have to find solutions for every member of your lab individually.
Setting standards means defining which habits we follow. Unless it is a setting we can change, it is sometimes as much about giving people the right opportunities. If you place different bins next to each other, people automatically understand that they are meant to be used separately.
It also makes your colleagues more likely to comply because they do not have to invest extra effort if they simply follow the standard.
That also matters when new people join (or you leave) because when we encounter defaults, we consider them a tested norm, in contrast to the effort and risk we connect to changing things from the norm.
Let's therefore look at a few examples to give you a sense of where more sustainable standards can be implemented:
Items - Choosing the Right One
Consider setting the smallest suitable size as the standard for your items.
A very common example is using smaller serological pipettes—e.g., 5 mL or 10 mL instead of 25 mL versions.
Avoiding unnecessarily large items is very effective. Simply reducing the size of just 10% of your waste adds up. Also, consider pipetting two or three times with a P1000 instead of using a serological pipette. The standard matters here. How do you write your protocols, and do you have 5 mL serological pipettes readily available in your workplace?
Another example is using 60 mm dishes instead of 100 mm dishes for routine cell culture maintenance.
Of course, an excellent opportunity also arises in procurement.
You could, for instance, make biobased tubes the default option that people can actively opt out of.
Instruments – Adjusting Settings
Prime examples include setting PCR holding temperatures to 10–12°C.
Consider that leaving instruments on when not in use (idle) also takes energy. Set a standard to turn off when possible. This is data from Eppendorf to give you an impression of what energy consumption looks like. Daily consumption is based on four standard runs, with the rest of the 8-hour day spent idle.
However, we should also consider which HPLC columns are installed by default and which gradients are set as the standard for routine analyses.
Choices - Nudging Effectively
Your standards also concern availability. I.e., do you allow people to make the right choice when different workflows collide?
An interesting example I encountered during my consulting work was keeping glass pipettes readily available next to plastic serological pipettes.
Similarly, options such as serum-free media or DNA isolation kits that do not require new collection tubes can be made readily available.
Protocols – Smart Optimization
Few labs follow best practices by conducting statistical analyses before starting an experiment. It can seem difficult and often appears unnecessary.
However, if you perform a power analysis, you may discover that you can reduce the number of mice used in a trial by more than 40% because the effect size is large enough to be detected reliably.
I can only urge you to make proper statistical reasoning and analysis the standard. Of course, although relatively few labs do this, it is sustainable because it ensures your conclusions are accurate and therefore that your resources are well spent. Moreover, there are many interesting approaches that can save time, money, and effort, such as the use of historical controls - an approach that is highly recommended.
On the other hand, you may find that you need more mice to have any realistic chance of detecting a signal. If a study is underpowered, the animals or samples used are likely to be wasted.
Additionally, optimization of gradients and the selection of solvents to use or test should also be mentioned here.
There is lots of literature on alternative reagents, solvents, and eluents available. This guide from the University of Pennsylvania is just one example. So, whether it is the solvent used for a synthesis or the eluent in your HPLC, you can check whether an alternative is worth testing and, if it works, make it the new standard.
Behaviors – Focusing on How We Work
Changing how we act is a subtle topic - often overlooked, yet very powerful.
Different countries separate waste in different ways. It is largely a cultural question rather than one of technical feasibility.
Just make sure bins are available in all of your labs. Once established, people will use them. While not all waste is recycled everywhere, separating it has rarely caused harm.
If your standard practice is to order items and reagents only once per week, you can reduce transport-related emissions and avoid rushed over-purchasing.
Another useful standard is documenting where items are stored, both in cupboards and in freezers.
Applying the Knowledge
Changing standards is a great opportunity because we rarely think about what became intuitive.
However, because standards are so deeply ingrained, we should be strategic about how we introduce change.
> Try to align the introduction of new standards with other changes that are already taking place.
For example, when a new instrument is installed, when a new member joins the lab, or when a new laboratory is being set up from scratch.
Secondly, do not make it a big issue. Treat these changes as normal practice.
Play it cool and simply ask whether you can change PCR holding temperatures, because everyone knows that DNA is stable at 10°C for several hours (although it helps to have a few papers ready).
In other words, treat it as a minor adjustment - because that is exactly what it is.
Finally, if people have doubts, proceed gradually.
Change the temperature of one freezer first, and once people become comfortable with it, move on to the others.
How We Feel Today
References
Kramer, M., et al., 2017. Reducing sample size in experiments with animals: historical controls and related strategies. Biological Reviews, 92(1), pp.431–445. doi:10.1111/brv.12237.
Yabré, M., et al., 2018. Greening reversed-phase liquid chromatography methods using alternative solvents for pharmaceutical analysis. Molecules, 23(5), p.1065. doi:10.3390/molecules23051065.
Quadros, G.T., et al., 2025. Bio-based green solvents in organic synthesis: An updated review. Sustainability & Circularity NOW, 2, a26460474. doi:10.1055/a-2646-0474.
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