TCIN’s mission to improve lab sustainability and achieve Green Lab certification began over six years ago. They've seen continued improvement since that day, going from Platinum status to Green Lab status, which is the highest level in the My Green Lab certification process.
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The journey was initiated by Camilla Roselli, a former PhD candidate in Prof Mani Ramaswami’s lab. Along with Prof Andrew Harkin, Ciaran Conneely, and Dr Virginia Mela Rivas, Camilla applied for and was awarded funding from the Provost’s Sustainability Fund to register TCIN with My Green Lab and pursue certification.
A member from each lab group in TCIN was nominated to act as a Green Lab representative, the TCIN Green Lab committee was formed, and the first meeting was held on 12th March 2020. The journey towards Green Lab certification began with a survey where they received an overall score of 44%. They eventually went on to achieve Platinum status, which kicked off an improved culture of sustainability in TCIN.
They have been researching and implementing more sustainable practices ever since. In the most recent bid to renew their certification, not only were all UTL freezers brought up to -70 but they were able to remove an entire freezer, saving valuable energy, resources and lowering carbon emissions. The process also helped identify specific areas where the sustainability education in TCIN had waned.
Key to their success was having a representative from each wet lab in TCIN in the working group, which was supported by Prof Andrew Harkin. This group, led by Dr Julia O’Sullivan, achieved 96% engagement in the initial survey and a starting status of Bronze based on a score of 79% overall.
Since the completion of the engagement survey, the group worked tirelessly to improve sustainability education and information in TCIN, ultimately resulting in achieving Green status following the final survey. This achievement was celebrated at the Neuroscience Research day hosted by TCIN. Green is the highest rating a lab can achieve from My Green Lab.
Huge congrats to TCIN for their consistent improvement of sustainable practices and for achieving Green status!
Green Lab working group members:
Julia O’Sullivan, Ph.D. (Committee chair/Caldwell Lab Rep)
Joern Hulsmeier, Ph.D. (Ramaswami Lab rep)
Dara O’Boyle (Doyle Lab rep)
Devin Seward (Harkin Lab rep)
Chris Sheridan (J. Kelly Lab rep)
Claire McParland (C. Kelly Lab rep)
Andrew Harkin, Ph.D.
Ciaran Conneely, Operations Manager