Senior Project Advisor

Steven Emory

Document Type

Project

Publication Date

Spring 2024

Keywords

sustainable, labs, research

Abstract

This report describes the creation of the new Sustainable Lab Certification program at WWU. Scientific and research labs are known to produce a lot of carbon emissions, and Western's labs are no exception. The Sustainable Lab certification process is open to labs from any department on campus, and includes a self-reporting audit that covers four categories of sustainability. Once labs fill it out, they can receive their certification scoring of Bronze, Silver, Gold or Platinum. We applied for and won a grant to provide participating labs with more sustainable options of different instruments and lab supplies and were able to deliver 10 toolkits of these items to sustainable labs. Through this process, we have engaged with students from a wide variety of majors and promoted sustainable habits that these students will take with them into the research world. We also met with over 10 labs who became certified and walked them through the process of becoming more sustainable. With the official launch of the program in May 2024, the SLC has successfully become an institutionalized program, and will live on housed in the Sustainability Engagement Institute with help from the SciTech department.

Department

Chemistry

Type

Text

Rights

Copying of this document in whole or in part is allowable only for scholarly purposes. It is understood, however, that any copying or publication of this document for commercial purposes, or for financial gain, shall not be allowed without the author’s written permission.

Language

English

Format

application/pdf

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