“At the kick-off meeting, we will present and discuss the set-up of the competition in detail and will invite research units to present their proposals on how to improve sustainability in research. The best proposals will have a chance to win some money to develop their ideas,” says Brian McCarthy, who is in charge of the competition that is being organised by the Synthetic Molecular Chemistry (SMC) lab at the Department of Chemistry at Uppsala University.

The funding for this initiative comes from Uppsala University’s climate pot, which makes money available for efforts to reduce the University’s climate impact.

A normal lab uses three to five times as much energy as a normal office, per square metre. Consequently, the many labs at Uppsala University are important factors in efforts to reduce energy use and minimise the University’s climate footprint.

The project on creating more sustainable labs started back in 2019 and has involved measures such as providing better information to everyone using the lab about more sustainable ways to use a fume hood, using air cooling instead of water cooling, and installing meters for monitoring. SMC has also created a network with other labs at the University, with a focus on sustainability.

If you are curious and have any questions: sustainability-kemi@uu.se