Sustainable Procurement

Green Lab Best Practices Database Other
1

This page gives some general information about putting together a Sustainable Procurement strategy. For specific pieces of equipment or consumables, please also check the relevant page. For example, if you are looking at buying a more sustainable fumehood, check out our Fumehoods section.

Impact

It’s been shown that for labs, Scope 3 emissions has a footprint many times greater than Scope 1 + Scope 2.
And most of our Scope 3 emissions is derived from the items we buy for the lab.

Overcoming Objections to Sustainable Procurement

Read our blog post: Green Procurement

Objection 1: “I’m just a researcher. I don’t have any control over our lab supplies”
Objection 2: “But Green Products Cost More”

Share/Donate/Buy

Before buying something, check out our Share/Donate/Buy section to see if another lab may have spare or unused/underused equipment or consumables. Try Ebay or Twitter.

Buy smallest quantities needed. If a supplier has larger quantities than you need, contact them to see if they can send you a sample.

Make sure your organization has a Sustainable Procurement/Purchasing policy.

Choose suppliers committed to sustainability

Opt for suppliers who have a clear commitment to sustainability and incorporate it into their business and manufacturing practices. Ask to see the life cycle analysis of products.

  • Compare a supplier’s organizational level sustainability performance, transparency, and reporting?
  • How do they dispose of their waste?
  • Establish a minimum bar for a supplier’s fair labour standards code of conduct (e.g. SA8000 and ILO) in their on factories and in their supply chain.
  • Require your suppliers to do (and let you see) risk assessments for each product (e.g. California Transparancy Act)
  • Track your supplier’s performance on a supplier sustainability reporting system.
  • Ensure your supplier doesn’t purchase anything with a Withhold Release Order in your country and world-wide (or G7 countries).
  • Have strict mandates on not using suppliers who are involved in the black market, money laundering, corruption or bribery.

Choose suppliers with less packaging

Opt for suppliers who use reusable packaging. Find out if their packaging is recyclable or if they have packaging take-back programs.

Have a system to complain to suppliers when they have used unneccesary amounts of packaging.

Choose suppliers who deliver sustainably

Can you choose a local supplier? Does your supplier optimize and choose sustainable fuels?

Choose packaging with as little ink as possible

The de-inking stage of recycling requires a large quantity of chemicals and the ink from the packaging contributes to chemical waste.

Choose alternatives that can be shipped at room temperatures (without ice packs, polystyrene or dry ice)

e.g. ThermoFisher Scientific has room temperature Taq polymerase and DNA analysis primers

e.g. NEB has thermostable, ambient storage polymerases, DNA ladders and protein standards.

The bonus is that, once received, these do not need to be stored in a fridge/freezer - saving you room and energy.

Choose sustainable models

Opt for models that are more energy and water efficient. Another feature to look for are energy saving modes, automatic sleep modes and automatic shutoff settings.

Other questions to ask

  • Are there less hazardous alternatives?
  • Made with recycled content?
  • Made with toxic or carcinogenic components?
  • Can be recycled by your current waste processes?
  • Made with reduced plastic?
  • Sent with reduced packaging?
  • Without polystyrene?
  • Reusable?
  • Bisphenol A free? Dioxine free?
  • Mercury free? Phatahlte plasticizer free?
  • Polyvinyl choloride free? (Incineration releases PVC dioxins)
  • Halogenated organic flame retardants? (<1000ppm?)
  • Closed loop recycling?
  • Is it made locally? (Look for local suppliers)

Where to find more sustainable products

Energy Star
Labconscious - Database of eco-friendly products
Millipore Sigma - Greener Alternative Products

  • Green Your Lab has interviewed MilliporeSigma. Their calculations and audit policies are all open source and allow for every user (including you) to understand how and why these ~1000 products were selected out of their extensive catalogue.

GPE Scientific

ACT - Sustainability nutrition label

  • Green Your Lab has interviewed ACT. Auditing is done by neutral third party and covers the manufacturing impact, the packaging, user impact in energy and water consumption, and disposal.

Labconscious has a list of what they’ve decided of Green products

Electronic Sustainable Procurement System

Use a communal digital platform for procurement where Sustainability data is linked. As for such a feature to be added to your exisiting precurement software.

  • Allows everyone to see the Sustainability information when choosing products to purchase
  • Allows information to be quickly found when in supplier negotiations
  • Ideally, there’s a scoring system do make it easy to rank suppliers

Supplier Negotiations

Put some effort into working with suppliers to reach the standards stated in your Sustainable Procurement policy.

  • Use your contracts to encourage them to change their business, supploy chain, or to get certified.

More Resources

University of California Sustainable Procurement Policy: sustainableprocurementguidelines.pdf (1.4 MB)
University of Edinburgh Lab Equipment Procurement information by equipment (REALLY GOOD RESOURCE): sustainable_laboratory_equipment_metering_procurement_and_operations_guide.pdf (302.3 KB)
London School of Hygene and Tropical Medicine Sustainable Procurement Guide:
document.pdf (598.5 KB)

Heading 1

Heading 2

Heading 3

This article is a stub. You can help by expanding it. Get Involved!

Reduce
Starting a New Lab
Other