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| | <h1 class="box-heading"> CHANGE ME</h1> | | <h1 class="box-heading"> CHANGE ME</h1> |
| | <p>GHG Calculation | | <p>GHG Calculation |
| − | Although we have been aware that our flights to Boston will cause most of the greenhouse gas emissions (GHG emissions) we decided to take the challenge and try to determine the entire carbon footprint of our iGEM project. Besides the GHG emissions of travelling, this would include the emissions caused by our daily work in the lab. While there are a lot of online tools to calculate your personal carbon footprint or the carbon footprint of your travel by plane, train or bus, we found nothing comparable for the GHG emissions of lab work. Since we set our minds on determining the factors that add most to the carbon footprint of our lab work we simply decided to do it by ourselves.
| + | Introduction/ iGEM goes green |
| − | We realized soon that we would need some help and expertise. Therefore, we got in contact with Toni Kiel, a business consultant for sustainability. In a first meeting, he introduced a concept for structuring our emissions to us. He accompanied the development of our calculation tool for weeks and provided us with helpful sources and professional advice. Thanks to his presence and assistance we could actually calculate the GHG emissions of our lab work.
| + | <p>For any new scientific project, it is important to consider the ecological and social impact. With our iGEM goes green initiative, we mainly focused on the sustainability aspects of our participation in iGEM. Considering the emission of greenhouse gases (GHG) as the major contribution to climate change, we tried to find ways to reduce the emissions caused by our project as much as possible. <p> |
| − | Foto von unserer finalen Ansicht.
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| | + | <p><b></i>"Human Practices is the study of how your work affects the world, and how the world affects your work."</i> — Peter Carr, Director of Judging </b></p> |
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| − | The carbon footprint of our lab work | + | <p>The iGEM competition encourages teams to consider the environmental implications of their projects. We took this sentence, published on the iGEM webpage, literally. With iGEM goes green we want to offer a new approach to share ways of ecological improvements of research projects and encourage as many teams and research groups as possible to get involved.</p> |
| − | The unit for measuring the global warming potential of the emitted greenhouse gases (GHG) is CO2. The different gases are multiplied with a factor that reflects their harmfulness for our climate. For instance, methane is 12.4 times as damaging as carbon dioxide, so one ton of methane accounts for 12.4 tons of CO2.
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| − | Figure X gives you an overview on the GHG emissions that we calculated for our own lab work. The emissions are classified by scopes that reflect different forms of emission. “Scope 1” relates to direct emissions caused, for instance, by burning coal. This scope is dismissed in our calculation as laboratories normally do not produce any direct emissions. “Scope 2” relates to indirect emissions caused by the generation of warmth and electricity and “Scope 3” accounts for all the other indirect emissions related to your work.
| + | <p>Talking to a lot of experts in the field of sustainability and environmental protection made us realize that there is a lot to catch up on regarding sustainable lab work and research.<p class="reference"><a href="https://2017.igem.org/Team:TU_Dresden/iGEM-goes-green"" style="color: green">Human Practices Silver</a></b></p> |
| − | In figure 1 there are no emissions listed for heating. This is only because we were not able to find any data for the heating of our lab. Since most of the time we spent in the lab was during the summer, we did not heat our lab for long periods of time. Therefore, we decided not to consider the emissions caused by heating. Furthermore, we were not able to include the power consumption of the ventilation and air conditioning of our lab.
| + | <p>Therefore, we integrated all the comments and input we obtained from experts into the planning and implementation of the iGEM goes green initiative and our scientific project as well. |
| − | The influence of electronical devices on the carbon footprint depends on the source of electricity. You can only prevent GHG emissions by using power from renewable sources. Otherwise electricity providers cause GHG emissions while producing power. Thus, it is possible to translate the power consumption into GHG emissions by multiplying the measured power consumption in kWh by the CO2-equivalents for the supply of 1 kWH as specified by your electricity provider. As you can see this scope adds the most to our carbon footprint. More than three quarters of the emissions are caused because of the enormous power consumption of our ultra-low temperature freezer (-80°C) and our ice machine. Read the section “What have we done to integrate the gained knowledge and to reduce GHG emissions?” to see how we dealt with this problem.
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| − | Although the emissions, caused by the production of the consumables we used, are low compared to the emissions arising because of electricity, we should not underestimate the environmental impact of consumables. The calculated carbon footprint does not reflect the total environmental consequences that the waste causes. On the one hand this is because we were not able to investigate the GHG emissions of the downstream processing of our waste (waste treatment like incineration or recycling) and on the other hand GHG emissions cannot not reflect other environmental effects waste causes like the persistence of plastic in the environment and its consequences.
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| | </p> | | </p> |
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| | </div> | | </div> |
| | </main> | | </main> |
