Description:
Research laboratories cultivate knowledge, inspire generations, and affect global change. For this reason, labs that strive to make their work more sustainable have the potential to change the way we live. Laboratories have a significant environmental impact in terms of energy and material consumption, waste produced, and hazardous materials processed. There are also less evident long-term societal impacts that are more difficult to understand. While some research processes require heavy consumption of resources and energy, there are undoubtedly opportunities for increases in efficiency and reductions in waste production. In order to identify those opportunities, the impact of laboratory activities can be broken down into more measurable categories. From such a foundation, guidelines, and targets can be formulated in order to develop policies and behavioral shifts that will work towards reducing the negative environmental impacts of campus labs. This work will highlight the progress that McGill has already made and create tools to benchmark the sustainability performance of labs.We have identified 3 dimensions of laboratory practices that require further research. Some research has already been done in theses categories at McGill. This will provide a starting point for students to summarize the available literature.
Bioresource Engineering Team:
How can we better manage resources to reduce the quantity and toxicity of lab waste? How can we reduce energy consumption of research labs?
Finances:
How can labs use their funding efficiently? How can funding be applied to improve lab sustainability? Can financial savings be correlated with positive societal or environmental impacts?
Social Impacts:
Does the lab provide a healthy environment for researchers? How does the research affect the community or broader society?
We propose to have a group of students with experience in these areas participate in applied student research. The students will review existing literature on sustainability metrics or assessments, and adapt them to context of McGill academic laboratories. Meanwhile, the project coordinators will create a consulting team to further develop and apply these metrics to several pilot labs. After areas for improvement have been identified, the consulting team will work closely with the labs to implement changes and monitor progress. Data will be aggregated from participating labs in order to run a pilot assessment of lab sustainability based on the metrics created. Continuity of these efforts will be insured by the faculty, staff, and project coordinators involved.
Objectives:
1. To develop metrics (whether newly created or adapted from previous work), within categories of sustainability, that can gauge the sustainability performance and the environmental impact of a research lab.
2. Methods have to be developed in order to apply sustainability metrics based on the variation that exists between labs on campus: equipment that a research lab uses, the type of research being undertaken in that lab etc.
3. These metrics should be harmonized or informed by parallel efforts to improve or measure the environmental impact of labs at comparable research institutions and Universities across North America.
Social Impacts:
Does the lab provide a healthy environment for researchers? How does the research affect the community or broader society?
We propose to have a group of students with experience in these areas participate in applied student research. The students will review existing literature on sustainability metrics or assessments, and adapt them to context of McGill academic laboratories. Meanwhile, the project coordinators will create a consulting team to further develop and apply these metrics to several pilot labs. After areas for improvement have been identified, the consulting team will work closely with the labs to implement changes and monitor progress. Data will be aggregated from participating labs in order to run a pilot assessment of lab sustainability based on the metrics created. Continuity of these efforts will be insured by the faculty, staff, and project coordinators involved.
Deliverables:
Research: The student will produce a 20-30 page research document that will outline their research and results found. This will present the sustainability categories, the metrics, an outline of comparable systems of assessment at other research institutions.
Presentation: Staff members at Hazardous waste, Environment Health and Safety, and those at the office of sustainability, will be invited to a presentation of the results hosted by the student.
Reflection Piece: The student will be expected to write a 1-2 page reflection on their experience, the challenges they faced, their solutions to those challenges, and provide feedback with regards to the ASR process.
Consulting Team: This group, created by the project coordinators, will be composed of staff, students, and professors. They will continue the project and improve the consultation processes over time. Dedicated partners include EHS, HWM, MEP, MWP, professors in chemistry and management.
People:
Faculty Supervisor: Prof. Kevin Manaugh
Client: Wayne Wood, Environmental Health and Safety
Project Coordinators: Student from MEP, Student from MWP
Direct collaborators: Chris Tegho from MEP’s Lab Energy Toolkit Project
Cyril Vallet from Reducing Chem. Waste in the Chem. Dept.
Victor Tran - ASR coordinator at MWP
Students: 2-4 students TBD (Environment, Management, Physical Sciences preferred)
Responsibilities and time Commitments:
The students are responsible for the management of their time, and ultimately the quality of their work. Note that according to McGill’s credit system, a 3 credit course represents roughly 9 hours of work per week when spread over a normal semester. They will register for an independent study course that is compatible with their program (ie. ENVR 490 or other).
Supervisors and an EHS staff member will each meet with the students regularly over the course of the project (as well as be available for a reasonable number of additional emails and phone calls), to answer questions and provide resources and guidance.
Project coordinators will help the students connect with people and resources from related work. They will also help share the results of the ASR with people involved in future work.