Sustainability in our laboratories

Labs are our most energy and resource intensive areas in the Medical School having a greater environmental impact than offices by at least five times and much work has been done to try and reduce this. Our School has achieved Gold Certification with the Laboratory Efficiency Assessment Framework (LEAF) in 100% of our labs. This is a tool designed by University College London that drives improvements in lab efficiency and sustainability. 

We have also taken part in the Freezer Challenge which teaches users how to be more energy efficient with their lab cold storage. The Southmead Learning & Research Building won 'Top individual laboratory for the academic lab category’ in 2020 and the Bristol Bioresource Laboratories won the award for ‘Best medium sized lab in the academic sector’ in 2022. 

Sustainable computing

To bring awareness and reduce environmental impact of our computing activities, we are joining forces with University of Bristol's Sustainability and High Performance Computing team to work towards obtaining the bronze award for Green DiSC: a Digital Sustainability Certification. We are one of two pilot studies within the University to investigate the feasibility of this certification before rolling out across the organisation.