Green Accreditations
What are they?
Green accreditations are certifications awarded to organisations, lab spaces and research groups, that meet specific environmental and sustainability standards. These standards aim to reduce environmental impact, ensure regulatory compliance, and promote sustainable practices. For laboratories, green accreditations can involve practices such as reducing energy use and water conservation, waste reduction, using sustainable materials, and implementing efficient processes. Accreditations often start at the bronze level and progress to silver and gold, reflecting increasing levels of commitment and achievement in sustainability.
Why are they important?
These certifications are important because they help laboratories contribute to global sustainability goals, such as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). By adopting sustainable practices, labs can support goals like climate action, responsible consumption and production, and clean energy. You can read more about the Universities approach to SDGs here.
Accredited programs establish uniform standards that help educational institutions create safer, more efficient, and diverse working environments. The University achieved its aim for 100% accreditation for applicable lab spaces in 2022, in line with the net zero targets. At Sustainable Labs we encourage lab spaces to achieve and maintain accreditation at least every 2 to show commitments to sustainability and to keep in line with any changes to award criteria, policies, procedures and to continue to contribute to net zero targets, both locally and globally.
More recently, funding bodies have begun requiring researchers to adopt sustainable practices, such as reducing energy consumption, reusing equipment, and recycling waste products. Some funding bodies now mandate accreditations, like LEAF and equivalents, to ensure compliance with these practices. For example, Wellcome mandates LEAF Bronze accreditation by the end of 2025, progressing to Silver by the end of 2026, while Cancer Research UK currently requires LEAF Silver. You can read more about funding body expectations on our SharePoint site.
How does my lab achieve a green accreditation?
If you have a new lab space or research group that is not registered with a green accredited programme or your lab cluster required restructuring, you can get started by:
- Forming a Lab Cluster: Include both technical and research staff to ensure best practices.
- Determining Certification Channel: Based on the lab's functions and nature of work.
- Notify Sustainable Labs: It is important you let us know about your lab space and chosen certification channel as this information feeds into the university’s wider sustainability goals. Join our Teams channel and bookmark our SharePoint site for guidance and resources to support your applications.
Spaces & recommended accreditations
- Wet Labs: For lab spaces with liquids, chemicals, and biological materials. Enrol in the Laboratory Efficiency Assessment Framework (LEAF).
- Digital Spaces: Virtual environments for online research and collaboration. Previously under LEAF, now asked to enrol in the Green DiSC award.
- Workshops: Lab spaces involving physical fabrication, assembly, and testing. Previously under LEAF, now recommended to explore other platforms. Contact us if your space doesn't fit the new LEAF criteria or Green DiSC criteria.
- Dry Labs: Lab spaces focusing on computational and theoretical research. Previously under LEAF, now recommended to explore other platforms. Contact us if your space doesn't fit the new LEAF criteria or Green DiSC criteria.
Accredited Programmes:
LEAF, developed by University College London's Sustainability Team, is an online green lab accreditation programme supporting sustainable and cost-effective lab management, teaching, and research. It covers topics surrounding waste, water, energy, travel, research quality, purchasing and more. Baseline calculators are used to help users quantify the impact of their actions by comparing financial costs and carbon consumption before and after implementing sustainable practices.
Participants submit online applications along with supporting evidence and information from baseline calculators, which is then reviewed by the Sustainable Labs team. Labs must enrol by contacting sustainablelabs@exeter.ac.uk and reapply every two years to maintain their status. In March 2022, all applicable lab spaces at UoE achieved LEAF certification, making UoE the second institution to reach this 100% milestone. In 2025, LEAF developers updated the criteria to improve sustainability efforts, now live on our LEAF portal. We urge all LEAF users to work towards reapplying for the updated criteria to show your commitment to sustainability. Below are some quick links for LEAF, but more resources and guidance is available on our SharePoint site.
Green DiSC is a new sustainability certification scheme designed to help research groups and institutions mitigate the environmental impacts of their computing activities. Computing is an essential component of modern research, and it comes with significant, but not always well-understood, environmental impacts. With the urgency of the climate crisis, it is becoming increasingly apparent to scientists using computing that the resulting environmental effects should be taken into account and mitigated where possible.
Similarly to LEAF, there are bronze, silver and gold criteria that follow key principles. The scheme is marked by peer review, so participating lab spaces can gain a greater insight into a wider range of sustainability practises during their review of applications from other institutions, with an added bonus being the growth of a friendly community of Green DiSC reviewers. We recommend lab spaces that are no longer applicable for the LEAF award to assess their suitability for the Green DiSC criteria. While it primarily targets digital spaces, some dry lab spaces may also qualify. For more information on enrolling, you can go to our SharePoint site. If you are trialling the Green DiSC certification, please let us know for our records, we'd love to hear from you!
If your lab space is not applicable for the above channels, please get in touch with Sustainable Labs so we can do our best to find the right accredited programme for you. More information is available through our SharePoint site.
Sustainable Labs Team
Keep in Touch
Contact us: sustainablelabs@exeter.ac.uk
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