Welcome to the Green Labs Newsletter! We hope this monthly round up of news, tips, and awards will help incite and continue your interest in sustainable practices in the laboratory. 

Vendor fair and GRCF service exhibitors!

The JHU Office of Sustainability and the GRCF are a featured partnership of the event.

Keynote: “Sequencing Benny: The Biodiversity Crisis” Alan Scott, PhD

Plenary: "Digging into genomics with BIODIGS at under-resourced institutions” Ava Hoffman, PhD

Bena Zeng is the lead engineer for the Smart Labs program. Her work focuses on increasing building operational performance. Her passion for sustainability and climate issues started in high school and she decided to focus on building energy efficiency in college. Outside of JHU, she works on converting her yard into a native plant and pollinator garden. She has pet worms for vermicomposting food and yard scraps. Natural environment/ resources sustainability stewardship is a strong core family value she teaches her kids.

Does your lab turn off equipment after use, have automatic lights, utilize outlet timers, or have high efficiency freezers? You likely are already eligible for a Green Labs certification!

Contact sustainability@jh.edu directly with questions or to start the process. 

Learn more here!

Check out Green Labs Ambassador Training** to learn more and start your lab off with more sustainable practices safe and beneficial to your experiments and work!

**you must be logged into myLearning in order to access this site

Be one in a million [signatures]! Join other scientists worldwide who want to see the scientific field lead the world to a better climate future and are requesting action by research funders to set expectations for efficiency, resiliency, and sustainability in the way scientific research is conducted.

Sign up for the 2024 freezer challenge!

The 2024 Freezer Challenge runs from January to June 30th. Official communication won't begin until the spring, but sign up today to get a head start and receive updates.

Read about it here, and sign up here!

Assign a lab member "autoclave roundup" responsibilities; when something is ready to be autoclaved, walk through lab and ask everyone (and neighboring labs!) if they have anything else they'd like to include in the sterilization run. This is more efficient, prevents near-empty autoclave runs, and promotes a culture of mutual benefit.