Sustainability tips for your lab

Sustainability in schools is everywhere, from pupils wanting to learn how to make a difference to climate change, to the positive little habits we can adopt to make school a more sustainable place.

Here at Philip Harris, we aim to lead positive change, by supporting schools to make more sustainable choices, all as part of our ESG commitments.

Seven sustainability tips for the lab and prep room

We’ve picked out some of our favourite tips to make your labs and prep room more sustainable.

1. Recycle, reuse, reduce your landfill waste

We’ve seen lots of our equipment find a new home on the likes of Preproom Buy Sell Exchange as products are upgraded, or surplus items are donated. If you have resources you no longer need, do consider rehoming them.

Monitor your stocks.  Do a thorough stock take periodically to ensure that you don’t order and consume more than you need.

Even things like packaging from your new resources can be reused, either within the department (for example during a lesson on insulators) or within the wider school. We’re sure Art or D&T would appreciate empty boxes too!

2. Buying sustainably

Some things you can look for when buying new equipment include:

• Check the energy consumption or energy efficient settings on appliances.
• Consider if you can use glassware rather than plasticware for your experiment.
• Think about what the product and it’s packaging is made of; and whether it can all be recycled.
• Look at the delivery options too – we partner with DPD to use their electric vehicles on the UK mainland.

3. Consider your carbon footprint

In addition to buying sustainably, there are some simple things you can do around the lab to reduce your operating carbon footprint

• Turn off equipment, computers, heating and lights when not in use
• Keep fume cupboards switched off when not in use
• If you can, optimize the settings on your equipment, fridges and freezers to use less energy
• Avoid unnecessary printing. If you really must print, choose double sided.
• If not already done, encourage your school to switch to a renewable energy source.

4. Maintenance

Maintaining your equipment not only makes it last longer, it can improve the performance of it too. Some of the things which make a difference are:

• Cleaning dust from cooling fans or fridge/freezer refrigeration coils
• Defrosting freezers
• Changing filters when needed
• Keeping equipment calibrated and serviced as per suggested routine

5. Spares and repairs

Don’t throw it away. See if it can be fixed. Give equipment a new lease of life by repairing it. We sell a range of spares and tools to do the job with.

For out of warranty repairs, our recommended repair and servicing agents, Tech Lab LTD, may be able to assist.  They are very familiar with and hold many spares for our equipment and can help with repair quotations. 

Our technical support team are always here to help too.

6. Share resources

Sharing with other departments or schools, or borrowing from equipment libraries (some universities have these) reduces how much we consume.

7. Encourage your department to be proactive

The real change happens when more people get involved….

Involve other technicians, teachers and school leaders in your sustainability initiative. It might be that they simply don’t know how they can help.

Ask students to get involved too – you will often find they are hugely enthusiastic about sustainability and could even teach you something!

Keep a track of where you are up to – reduced energy usage is not only better for the environment, it is good for school budgets too!

Tell us your sustainability ideas for the lab

These are just seven areas we can think of to become more sustainable in the lab. There are many more too. Share your tips for sustainability in the lab on our Twitter and Facebook pages. Who knows, you could even help another Technician along the way!